Coconut milk is not a liquid — it's an emulsion of fat and water, and braising with it follows fundamentally different rules than braising with stock or wine. Too high a heat and the emulsion breaks, splitting into greasy oil floating on thin, watery sauce. Some dishes — rendang being the defining example — deliberately reduce the coconut milk over hours until the emulsion breaks completely and the separated oil fries the meat in its own coconut fat. That transformation from wet braise to dry fry is one of the most extraordinary techniques in all of cooking. But it must be deliberate, not accidental.
Quality hierarchy: 1) Full-fat coconut milk ONLY — this is NON-NEGOTIABLE. Light coconut milk is full-fat with water added. You're paying for water. The fat content is what creates the creamy body and carries flavour. A curry made with light coconut milk will always taste thin and disappointing. 2) Thick versus thin — the can naturally separates into thick cream (top) and thin milk (bottom). These are used at DIFFERENT stages. Thick cream goes in first to fry the paste (see Thai curry method). Thin milk goes in later for the braise. Using them interchangeably ignores the entire architecture of the dish. 3) Temperature control — for a creamy curry, never boil hard. Coconut milk emulsion breaks at sustained temperatures above 100°C. The surface should show gentle, lazy bubbles — not a rolling boil. If you see oil separating when you didn't intend it, the heat is too high. 4) Acid timing — lime juice, tamarind, and tomato accelerate emulsion breakdown. Add acidic ingredients in the last 5 minutes, off or near off the heat, for curries where you want the emulsion intact. For rendang, the acid goes in early because you WANT the breakdown. 5) The rendang transformation — this is the pinnacle of coconut milk technique. Full-fat coconut milk is simmered for 2–4 hours. The water gradually evaporates. The sauce thickens, then breaks. The oil separates. The meat, which has been braising, begins to FRY in the separated coconut oil. The sauce reduces to a thick, dark, dry paste clinging to each piece. The meat is simultaneously braised-tender and fried-crisp. No other single cooking process achieves both textures.
The visual timeline for rendang: at 1 hour it looks like a curry (thin, saucy). At 2 hours it thickens noticeably. At 2.5–3 hours the oil starts separating — you'll see clear pools of amber oil on the surface. At 3–4 hours the liquid is gone, the meat is frying in the oil, the sauce has reduced to a dark paste clinging to each piece. The sound changes too: from bubbling simmer to quiet frying crackle. That crackle means the water is gone and the Maillard reaction is happening in coconut oil. You're now creating flavour compounds that didn't exist during the braise phase. For creamy Thai and Malay curries: add thin coconut milk gradually, tasting as you go. You can always add more; you can't remove it. The sauce should coat the back of a spoon — not pool like water and not cling like paste. Coconut cream whipped with a hand mixer becomes a dairy-free whipped cream for desserts — but only full-fat, refrigerated overnight, scooping only the solid cream. The thin liquid makes an excellent rice cooking medium.
Boiling coconut milk hard — the emulsion separates, and instead of creamy sauce you have greasy oil on watery liquid. Shaking the can — you've just remixed the thick and thin layers that you need to use separately. Using light coconut milk — it cannot produce the body or flavour that full-fat provides. Adding lime juice or tamarind to a vigorously simmering curry — the acid accelerates the split. Stirring too aggressively — gentle stirring is fine; aggressive whisking can mechanically break the emulsion. Giving up on rendang — the transformation from wet braise to dry fry takes 3–4 hours. Most home cooks stop at the braise stage and wonder why their rendang is soupy. The sauce MUST reduce until it breaks and the oil separates. That's the moment the dish becomes rendang instead of a curry.