Homemade Coconut Milk

I've had these 2 fresh coconuts sitting in my kitchen for a couple weeks that I thought today would be a great day to make coconut milk, as well as coconut flour.

My first coconut had a lot of juice in it.  My dad gave me an ice pick to poke a hole in the coconut and drain it of the coconut water.  Didn't taste real sweet, but I think it's supposed to be healthy for you.  Coconut water is a bit on the pricey side at the store.

My first cracked coconut - you need to drain the coconut water first before cracking it (save the water)

So, I'm thrilled at draining the coconut.  Then, I get a hammer, place a Trader Joe's paper bag on the floor and begin to tap the coconut with the hammer on it's equator.  It cracks.  I crack all the way around.  My next tool is a butter knife.  I then use the butter knife to pry all the coconut meat from the shell and it came out fairly easily.  Within 10 min. or so, I had all the coconut meat out of the whole coconut.  Easy, eh?

There was more coconut meat than this

Meat from first coconut came out very easily

Well, coconut #2 did not have much coconut water.  In fact, it was just maybe 1 teaspoon full while the other was about 1/2 cup full.  HUGE difference.  After I confidently cracked the shell into smaller pieces, I couldn't get the meat out.  I thought I would injure myself with the knife.  My dad had a scooper thing, and that worked better, but the butter knife no longer served and I really didn't want to use a real sharp object, just in case it slipped and I ended up slicing myself.

The 2nd Coconut!

My left arm was already in throbbing pain (yes, I chose to open coconuts with a bum left arm) from my son running a Costco shopping cart into it at full speed.  Yes, boy children are so much fun sometimes.

Anyway, my daughter didn't like that the coconut meat of the first coconut had "debris" on it so she washed it all off.  I placed all the coconut meat from Coconut #1 in the Blendtec blender with about 6 cups of water, maybe a little more.  I blended it for maybe 1 min. or less.  Took a 1 gallon paint strainer bag from Lowe's (the cost for 2 bags was about $2 total - much cheaper than cheese cloth) and fit it into a TollHouse cookie dough container (yes, I used to cheat and get these in my grain & sugar days).  It has elastic, so it fit real well.

Coconut #1 Meat and I added about 5-6 cups of water to this

Blended for about 30-45 sec on Speed 3 on Blendtec (in a less powerful blender, maybe 2 min)

Looks like milk

I poured the coconut milk & pulp into the bag, lifted the bag out of the milk and squeezed it to get all the milk out.  Voila!  Coconut milk.

Paint Strainer Bags from Lowe's - $2 for 2 bags (way cheaper than cheese cloth)

Empty Paint Strainer Bag over 1 Gallon Container (fits perfectly)

Poured the Coconut Milk & Pulp into the Paint Strainer Bag & Container

About to Squeeze the Milk From the Pulp in the Bag

Just finished yesterday a 1/2 gal of Trader Joe's Coconut Milk so Will Re-use this for Fresh Coconut Milk

I took out the remaining pulp, spread it on a baking sheet and put it in the toaster oven on dehydrate for a couple hours and when it's done, I'm going to make coconut flour.  WAY cool.

The coconut cost me $1.69.  I made enough milk to hold about 3/4ths of a half gallon (8 cups is a 1/2 gallon, I think).  And, I should get about 1/2 lb of coconut flour.  Half gallon of coconut milk (unsweetened) at Trader Joe's is $2.99.  I think a pound of coconut flour is about $3.49 or $3.89 at Sprouts in the bulk section.  The price per cup of fresh coconut milk is about 14 cents and for Trader Jos'e about 37 cents.  The price per pound of coconut flour for me is about $1.69/lb.

Buying the same product at the store would be $6.48 for the same thing in a fresh coconut at $1.89.  That's a $4.59 savings.  If it was like the first coconut really easy to do, which really took a total of about 15 min. to do from start to finish, it's worth it.  If it's like the 2nd coconut, NOT.

Anyway, I just wanted to see what it was like to do this on my own.  Maybe with the right tools, it would've gone even quicker.  I don't know.  But, the result was really yummy.