Homemade Coconut Milk - A Simple Method - Seaview, Lower Puna, Far East Big Island, Hawai'i - May 4, 2022

Warm greetings all. 🙏 💚

Today I made another batch of coconut milk, and I decided to take photos of the process to share with y'all here. There are a few different ways to make coconut milk. If you have a good juicer, such as a Green Star (or similar models) turbine juicer, the you can simply run coconut meat from older coconuts or coconut sprouts through it and you have coconut milk. If you don't have a turbine juicer, however, there are still methods for making yummy coconut milk, quite easily, and I'm going to show you one of them today. 🥥

The first step is to cut the coconuts open to drain out the coconut water inside. I use my trusty Fijian machete. The coconut water from older coconuts, while still good, is not the best for drinking, as much of the natural sugars have been used up already. It can be drunk straight, used to make coconut milk (I used the coconut water from these coconuts to make smoothies yesterday), or put in smoothies.

The second step is to chop the coconuts into smaller sections, to more easily extract the coconut meat. The older a coconut the harder and thicker the coconut meat. The meat I'm using is mid-age, from coconuts that we call shakers, so while it is quite firm, it's also still very pliable.

The third step is to remove the coconut meat from the coconuts. A strong spoon, butter knife, a chisel, or a specialized coconut popper could all be used, though depending on how hard the coconut meat is, one or the other may be more useful and easier. A strong butter knife worked great for me this time.

The fourth step is to wash the coconut meat. Since I chopped the coconuts on the ground, I had to wash some dirt off, along with smaller bits of coconut husk and nut.

The fifth step is to put the cleaned coconut meat into a blender, fill it with water or the coconut water from the coconuts (though in older coconuts there is usually not enough water to be very useful for this purpose), then blend it until smooth. This is a VitaMix blender, a very powerful and efficient blender, which makes the process quicker.

With the VitaMix I blended it for one minute. If you're using a less powerful blender, you'll likely have to do it in smaller rounds, and it will take longer, but should still work fine.

The sixth step is to pour the blended coconut meat and water into a strainer bag and then gently squeeze and wring it out, until there is no more (or very little) coconut milk coming out of the bag. With a full blender, I had to do this two times.

Step seven is to pour the newly made coconut milk into a jar or jars, depending on how much is made. Today I made a half gallon (two quarts). The squeezed out coconut meat can be seen in the quart jar next to the half gallon of new coconut milk. Coconut meat and milk spoil quite quickly, so put it in the refrigerator unless it is going to be used right away.

There you have it! A simple, quick way to make coconut milk. Of course, you do need to have enough coconuts of the proper age, so while I agree this may not be easy for those that don't live in tropical or subtropical locations without coconuts, if there are coconuts available, it's not difficult at all. 🥥

I hope y'all enjoyed this tutorial! Thank you all so much for allowing me to share more of the beauty and magic from my life and world, and for your continued appreciation and support! 🙏 💚