Make your own coconut milk
This is very easy
If you start with organic coconut flakes it literally takes a couple of minutes.
Personally I prefer to start with a fresh coconut as it works out cheaper. I make roughly 1L of coconut milk for about £ 1.20 (the cost of a small coconut, although it varies according to how big is the coconut you buy). But scraping the coconut flesh out of the husk is a bit time consuming so the whole exercise takes me about 20 minutes - although I expect to get faster as my coconut-scraping improves with practice.
Making your coconut milk
Take a fresh coconut
Drain out the coconut water and keep it in a glass. Don't throw it away as you are going to use it in a bit.
To drain it, punch two holes in one end where you will see three dark marks (see pic). Punch the holes through two of the dark marks as these are weak points. I use a across-head screwdriver and a hammer. Pour out the coconut water.
Next, break open the coconut by whacking it with the hammer.
Scrape and cut out the white flesh into a bowl. Make sure there are no brown bits clinging to the white flesh.
Chuck the husk and brown bits in your compost. Most of the various things I am making have almost zero waste as I've found almost everything can be used but as of this writing I've not yet found a use for the husks.
There are items made of coconut husks, such as very excellent environment-friendly pan scourers, which I'll tell you about as soon as I get around to it but I don't know how to make these. If you know of a way to use the husks then please do email me (ablecopywriter@gmail.com) and let me know.
In the meantime I can at least use the husks and leftover bits for the composting actions of the noble art of allotmenting.
Okay, so once you have scraped out all the white flesh, measure out one cup of the flesh and put it in your blender. Add four cups of warm filtered water (with the coconut water that you set aside - see above - mixed in).
You can also add a few drops of organic vanilla essence and/or a sweetener such Stevia if you prefer, according to what your taste buds like but I never bother as the coconut tastes fine on its own.
Give it a whirl for a minute in your blender.
Pour the contents of the blender through a fine-mesh sieve lined with muslin (cheese cloth) into a bowl. Squeeze out every last drop of liquid through the cheese cloth.
You now have a bowl of coconut milk which you can transfer to a suitable container such as a screw top jar and keep in the fridge. It will keep for about four days normally.
It is normal for a crust of coconut "butter" to form on the surface of the milk. Just be sure to shake the jar before drinking.
I will be exploring what can be done with said coconut "butter" as a resource in its own right a bit later on.
You will normally find that your coconut yields enough flesh to fill or half fill (depending on how big is your coconut) another cup and repeat the above process. Remember to use the ratio of one volume of coconut to four volumes of water.
However, if you want to make your milk creamier and more coconut-y you can play around with reducing the volume of water.
In your muslin cloth you have left-over coconut mulch. Don't throw it away. It makes a nice addition to porridge or smoothies and I've found it works well in my home-made organic chocolate. You might think of other tasty uses for it (such as adding to cake or biscuit recipes).If so, please do email me and let me know.
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