Jasmine rice cooked in a mixture of thin coconut milk and water — the coconut milk's fat and sugar providing a subtle enrichment to the cooked rice without making it heavy or distinctly coconut-flavoured. Coconut rice is not itself a finished dish in the Thompson canon; it is a component preparation that underlies several Thai-Chinese and Thai dessert applications, most notably as the rice component of khao niew mamuang (Entry TH-27) in certain serving variations and as the base for coconut-enriched rice dishes in the southern and coastal Thai tradition.
**The ratio:** Replace half or all of the water in the standard jasmine rice absorption method (Entry TH-13) with thin coconut milk — the second pressing (or the thin layer from canned coconut milk). Full replacement with thick coconut cream: the rice becomes too rich and the grains clump from the fat. Half replacement with thin coconut milk: the correct balance — subtle enrichment, slight sweetness, a faint coconut aromatic without the rice tasting primarily of coconut. **The salt:** A small pinch of salt added to the coconut-milk cooking liquid is essential — the same sweet-salt amplification principle as all Thai coconut dessert preparations (Entries TH-27, TH-57, TH-84).
David Thompson, *Thai Food* (2002); *Thai Street Food* (2010)