In the last year, I’ve been trying a lot more Thai curries. I buy the paste (can or pouch, I’m partial to Penang) at the Asian market, chop some boneless chicken thighs and saute them with the paste in an open skillet. After I had an episode with coconut milk separating (didn’t taste bad, but seemed wrong somehow) from being cooked too long, I now add the coconut milk at the end as a finishing cream.
I very much enjoy the results, but I notice that the recipes I find online all want me to add the coconut milk quite early, even bringing it to a boil. Seems like that would cause it to separate. What’s the gain?
Do you have any example? I’m not recalling any Thai dishes with coconut milk that cook for very long or require boiling. Haven’t seen the milk separate so I’m not sure what you’re running into. Is it the fat separating out, or the solids congealing apart from the liquid?
Too late for ETA:. Google tells me it can separate if cooked too long on high heat. So simmering works, long boiling doesn’t. But, it can also be stirred back together, and also can be stabilized with a bit of cornstarch.
My daughter is lactose intolerant. She uses coconut milk as a replacement in recipes. Last night she made corn chowdah (sic) using coconut milk and it worked fine. Simmering seems to be the key.
I use it a lot for Chicken soup and mushroom soup.
I take a can of coconut milk, put in a bowl, add flour (to thicken it) and mix well. I add the mixture to the already cooked soup as a finishing touch.
Not particularly specific to coconut milk. but I have found that recipes that call for simmering often work better by putting them in a closed pot (dutch oven or similar) after the initial saute phase and letting them meld in the oven just above boiling temp for a while. Seems to avoid problems with evaporation, and sometimes, separation too.
I’ll second this. I have a small collection of enameled cast iron pots with covers. And I oven-simmer stuff at 225°F, because no matter how low you make the flame you’re bound to get a difficult-to-scrape black or brown spot on the bottom of the pot
I used to try to replicate Thai red curries from restaurants at home, and I couldn’t get the flavor right-- I’d add the coconut milk, chicken stock and curry paste at the end, and it would taste too strongly of coconut milk.
Then I found a recipe where chicken thighs are browned in oil, and then simmered for an hour or two in a mix of coconut milk and chicken stock. The long simmering mellowed out the coconut flavor, and it was a bit of a eureka moment- I realized that’s how Thai restaurants must make their red curries! It allows me to make a big batch of curry sauce base that I can freeze into portions, and I haven’t noticed any separating, not anything too bad anyway.
That’s what I do. In the coconut fat, along with other spices as appropriate. Some brands aren’t fatty enough for the fat to separate well and you can get a sputtery mess. Some of them, to my horror, are low fat. I wonder if I can get cans of just coconut milk fat to use.
In Thai curries, the idea is to first “crack” the coconut cream so the fat seperates and the curry paste is cooked in the fat. If you boil the paste you don’t get the right flavour. Also, the curry should look obviously like it’s oily, which can weird for people not used to it.
But just do what you like. Try the real way and taste the difference. You get more curry flavour because the aromatics mix better in the oil.
Some brands of coconut cream work better than others.
I should have thought to look for that before. It can be difficult find any coconut milk in the stores around here but I see it’s available from Amazon. This is going to an interesting twist. Several years back I got serious about cooking Thai food after a thread here on the Dope. I had been serious about eating Thai food for a long time before that. Now I can see a lot more control and variety available for sauces and also getting away from the basic sauce type curries that are good but way too common. I can see a lot of fusion of styles too.
It can be sweetened but isn’t always. Wikipedia suggests cream of coconut is the term for is the sweeted stuff but, yea, probably good to read the label to make sure the right one winds up in your shopping cart.
Right. Cream of coconut is different and found with the drink mixers at the grocery store. Coconut cream is not pure fat but so much so you can saute with it, just like butter.
Thanks you’re right, I was mistaken about what it is. But I’m definite as to what it is not: “cans of just coconut fat.” Pure coconut fat is sold as coconut oil, and not as coconut cream.
Sure, you’re right on that. However, I think coconut cream was closer to what @TriPolar was asking about: a milk with higher fat content. I haven’t found a good use for coconut oil beyond popcorn.