Coconut Milk and Coconut Cream: Extraction and Use

Fresh coconut extraction was standard kitchen practice in Thailand until the 1970s when commercial coconut milk became available in cans. Thompson's Thai Food addresses the difference between fresh and canned with characteristic directness: they are different products. Fresh coconut cream, made from a freshly grated coconut, has a sweetness and aromatic freshness that canned cannot replicate. For the majority of restaurant applications, canned coconut milk of good quality (the Thai brands favoured by Thompson: Aroy-D, Chaokoh) produces credible results.

The liquid soul of Thai curry — made by infusing freshly grated coconut flesh in hot water and squeezing the resulting liquid through cloth to produce coconut cream (the first, richest pressing) and coconut milk (the second, more dilute pressing). The distinction between coconut cream and coconut milk is not merely one of fat content — it is the distinction between a liquid that will separate into oil and a liquid that will not. The separation is not failure; in Thai cooking, it is technique.

The cracking of coconut cream is a transformation of the same order as clarifying butter — the water is removed, leaving behind the fat that carries and concentrates the aromatic compounds of the coconut. As Segnit notes, coconut oil's saturated fat profile makes it an extraordinarily stable and efficient carrier of fat-soluble aromatic compounds — the volatile terpenes of lemongrass and kaffir lime dissolve into the hot coconut oil during the paste-frying stage and are distributed through every subsequent addition of liquid. This is why correctly cooked Thai curry tastes more aromatic than incorrectly cooked — the aromatics have been dissolved in fat rather than merely suspended in water.