I wanted to share with my children how I used to make coconut milk from scratch how my grandmother taught me, It's a long and messy process but is so worth it. The first thing to do is get the area ready since it is a very messy and long process you need to get a bowl to capture the coconut water that will come out of the coconut.
Get a hammer and I can't emphasis enough be very careful at this time as you have to strike the coconut as you turn it with each strike to open it and have the water fall into the bowl that you have under the coconut and once again i say be very careful hammering away. If you feel this maybe to dangerous you can always buy the coconut flakes at your local whole food store in bulk or at a natural food store.
At this point you have an option to put it over some heat like your stove make sure to have the windows open or doing this on your barbecue, the heat loosens the meat of the coconut and makes it easier to be removed.
You don't have to do this part you can use a butter knife or a special utensil that is made to remove the coconut meat. I like to use a butter knife because it is not that share and I have to be honest this is a long and hard process, but it is so worth it.
As you can see I put the coconut on the heat and I had to open all the windows to make sure I didn't make to much smoke. If you decide to do this once again please be careful and you only have the coconut on each side for a few seconds, you must use a hand cloth that is heat resistance to grab the coconut and turn it. Once again I recommend you skip this part and just go and take the coconut meat out little by little.
As you can see in the picture below I have taken out the coconut meat, I had a total of five (5) coconuts so my work was cut out for me, I had a lot of help with this part, my kids helped out (they are much older I don't recommend small children helping out)
On the picture below you can see some of the coconut has some of the skin on it, I used a peeler to remove most of it and a knife to cut it up into manageable pieces for my blender (Nutri-Bullet).
Be very careful cutting up the coconut meat, oh by the way get ready to get really messy
I took some of the coconut meat and water and just started to blend little by little I would add water enough to blend it and not to over flow the Nutri-Bullet of course this process will be different if you are using a blender.
You can add at least took cups of water or more depending on how thin you want it or how thick you want the mild to be so this part will be the time you will have to eyeball it.
So go with lets say at least two cups of water if using a blender, this process can be repeat 3 to 4 times with the same coconut pulp to get as much coconut milk as you can and not letting it get to watery.
The above picture you see I used cheesecloth to pour the liquid throw and I had a big bowl underneath, I put the coconut shavings to the side to redo the same process and with the coconut shavings you can make coconut oil and coconut flour so you get so much from the coconut.
The first mason jar is the coconut water which I enjoy with a couple of dates and blend it together or I use the coconut water in a smoothie. The other ones are the coconut milk which I use also in smoothies and making some Popsicle for the entire family. On a side note I would like to advise that coconut milk will last for at least 3 to 4 days I say more 3 days to be on the safe side so get ready to enjoy a whole lot of coconut milk.
You can use a little bit of vanilla, organic sugar or Stevie to sweeten the coconut milk and you can do this before you but it in the fridge. This is the time you have to decided how much of the coconut milk you will put aside to use to make coconut oil. I used at least two of the jars since I had a total of 4 mason jars.
I took the left over coconut shavings and laid it out very thinly on a cookie sheet, I had at least 3 cookies in the oven which I had at 175 degrees for at least 4 hours, if you have a dehydrator this is even better follow the instructions given by the manufacturer for this part.
Make sure if doing this part by oven to check the flakes to make sure they don't burn if you oven can go lower do so, take a spoonful of the flakes out to see if they are dry, make sure not to burn yourself cool the flakes down by blowing some air on it.
Make sure the flakes are dry once dry this is when you can put the flakes in your food processor and hit pulse for at least 7 times then blend it until you can see that it has the look of flour make sure to remove the coconut flour before it becomes coconut butter.
On the picture below here is wear I start to make the coconut oil, how to do this is once you have your milk in the fridge you will notice that the milk has separated this is the cream that has floated to the top and this is what you careful scoop up and put aside.
Once you have enough of the cream scooped out you put in in a pan on low heat and begin to stir, you can raise the heat a little but you must be watchful as it starts to pop I learned this the hard way.
As you see in the 3rd picture the color of the coconut cream is starting to change to a light caramel color this is the beginning process of getting oil out you must continue to stir for a while. It took me at least 30 to 45 minutes doing this but it was so worth it.
On the fourth picture below you can see that the coconut cream is looking more like cooked ground meat and less like cream, by this time your heat should be on low and make sure that all the cream has cooked and does look like ground meat and not burnt.
You should at this time remove it from the heat and get your cheesecloth ready to pour the oil through to get every bit out and remove all of the cooked coconut cream but please make sure to let the oil cool down as it will be very hot.
Also I don't recommend eating the cooked coconut cream as it wont be tasty, I say this because I tried it and nope not tasting good at all the crunchy part, you can go ahead and throw away this part and enjoy the coconut milk you made the flour, and oil.
I spent a total of $5.00 dollars each coconut was 99cents!
