How to extract Coconut Milk ?

How to extract Coconut Milk?

Coconut milk is an essential ingredient in some of the South Indian - especially Kerala cuisine and also some of the Asian cuisine (including Malaysian / Sri Lankan) for Laksa, Chicken korma etc. While several options are available to obtain milk, like getting coconut milk off the shelf or mixing coconut powder in water etc; I always prefer homemade coconut milk - the reason being better quality and taste when prepared at home. The homemade coconut milk is superior in both taste and quality (we’re not sure what the manufacturers add to preserve coconut milk. Unlike bovine milk, coconut milk cannot be pasteurized). Here’s the detailed description of how to extract coconut milk.

250 g grated coconut required for 150 ml thick milk and 250 ml thin milk.

You should select coconut which are just mature (the more maturity, the less milk will it yield). Scrape coconut. Grind in a mixer for a couple of minutes with 75 ml water. Tie this ground mixture of coconut scraping in a clean cotton cloth and squeeze this to take the milk out. This milk taken out first time is the thick coconut milk and keep it aside in a cool place (the milk will spoil on heating). Once the coconut scrapping is fully squeezed, the resultant scrapping which is dry, is then immersed in 150 ml of luke-warm water for 5 min. Repeat the process to extract thin milk. The thin milk is used for initial cooking.

Once the cooking is done with thin milk, take the dish off the stove and then only pour the thick milk and should not heat any more.