Coconut milk is an artificial ingredient: coconuts don’t have milk, they have water. To make the thing they call milk the producers mix in some coconut pulp and fat and sometimes sweetener to varying degrees and they can indeed separate. But it does not spoil the product, it just looks unappetising. I too have found it better to add the so called milk at the end, if the taste is too strong, you should probably add less.
When someone asks for just coconut milk fat, my assption that they’re asking about just fat. 100% coconut fat is coconut oil.
Coconut oil is useful for much more than popcorn. There’s something if a movement behind it the last decade or so in fact. I use it pretty regularly; about a pound a month. For what it’s worth the fats I use in the kitchen are, in rough order of volume,
Canola
Ghee
Coconut
Butter
Avocado
Olive
Lard
Almond
Thank you. I was just looking for very fatty coconut cream though. Yes, pure coconut fat is coconut oil, which is a very useful cooking product. It’s 78F melting point makes it very versatile.
This past February the Prefects took a cooking class on Koh Samui and our teacher insisted that the best coconut milk to use is 100% coconut milk and we boiled the milk for quite a while before adding our paste. He didn’t say why, but I think it was to remove as much water as possible from the milk for a creamier paste.
It was probably the best green curry I have ever had. And this wasn’t my first time in Thailand.
One of the lines that he used that the Fam has recalled in our attempts to remake that goodness in Canada, “No sugar, no Thai” 
Boiling does make it less watery but the main reason he said to boil it for ages was to split (crack) the fat out from milk to properly cook the paste.
And the sugar is important yeah because more sugar means you can also add more fish sauce and more sourness and more chilli even.
Because it is a solid when cooled, coconut oil is useful for making cannabis capsules.
Thanks for the explanation!
Now I am craving green curry, going to have to head out into the lockdown to look for paste ingredients.
Coconut milk - real coconut milk - is made by squeezing grated coconut flesh. I know this because this what I get at my local market; the vendors make it right in front of you. No water, fat, or sweeteners are added. It is as artificial as fresh squeezed orange juice.
That is nice to know 
That is the problem: real coconut milk means something different for different producers. Your local market is not an industrial producer, congratulations, I wish I had something similar around my place. If you look at the ingredients list on the can or tetra pack you buy in a shop you will see that most people are not as fortunate as you are. Just checked my cupboard: the coconut milk with the least ingredients has ground coconut (70%), water and E435. The other includes ascorbic acid and lecithin. OK, could be worse. None of mine have sugars or starches.
One of my favorite Bob Marley songs.
mmm
Thanks for the tip, I’ll try this next time I make a Thai curry.
In Hawaiian food, the coconut is never boiled. To retain its freshest taste, it’s added later in the cooking process. Haupia, for instance, is heated gently with arrowroot until it thickens. Although nowadays they use gelatin or cornstarch. The only recipes that are cooked a long time at higher temps are things like kulolo, which is mixed into poi and baked along side other dishes in the Imu with the Kailua pig and laulaus.
That is actually pretty good for industrially-produced coconut milk. I just took exception to your claim that coconut milk has added fat and sweeteners. Any product that has those adulterants shouldn’t make the claim that it’s coconut milk.
We make a sort of approximation of Thai curry by taking the can of curry paste (we primarily like red, panang and massaman) and basically dissolving it in a little coconut milk, and cooking it a little while. I suppose it’s like blooming spices in oil- maybe 1/2 cup of coconut milk to a 4 oz can of curry paste. Cook it until it’s fragrant and dissolved in the curry paste. At that point, we usually add the remainder of the coconut milk (the rest of the can we just used, plus one more) and get it all well stirred together. Then in goes roughly equal parts of fish sauce and sugar. Basically I start with 1/3 cup of each, and go from there until it tastes right. Then it gets simmered a while, and the vegetables are added at the appropriate times so they don’t turn to mush, but so they’re adequately cooked as well.
Serve with rice.
Can’t say the coconut milk has ever separated on us, even when it’s boiled a little bit.
I came across this reddit thread today about this same topic:
[deleted by user] : AskCulinary
And it’s no accident that I’m just coming off a strong Thai curry kick. This thread made me do it! I’ve said before that I go through strong meal phases and have made three batches in about the last three weeks. The Maesri curry pastes are like cheating. So easy to use and absolutely delicious. The last batch was a four-can coconut milk bonanza that mixed green and …another paste, either panang or masaman (I forget and the can is already gone).
The Thai eggplants at lower right are simply magnificent. If you’ve never had them, they have extremely delicate skins with virtually no bitterness but retain that unique eggplant flavor. The size and shape of golf balls, these kept me going for several batches. They have a delightful squeakiness when bitten. Not shown is the 8 oz can of bamboo shoots that don’t add much flavor but heavily contribute to the textural diversity in this curry, highly recommend. At upper right are some brown beech mushrooms, very mild and delicate as well as some red bell pepper, mostly for color but the flavor does come through. Lower left are a sliced tomato and a small zucchini. That’s about a pound and a half of chicken at 9 o’clock.
I dry fried the green curry paste with the onion and jalapeno until very fragrant and the paste softens before picking up a little color. Then add the two cans of coconut milk and bring to a gentle simmer. Then the chicken breast (I’d have preferred thighs but it’s so hard to get smaller quantities) goes in to simmer till cooked. Then, add the rest of the vegetables, luckily none need significantly more cooking than the others (unlike if I’d have added, say, potato or carrot). The mushrooms can go in last. Next, I noticed I had way too much chix and veg for the amount of curry ‘soup’ so I panicked and put in the extra can of paste and two more cans of milk. I think I added a few more of the Thai eggplants then, too, they’re really great.
So, I’ve been eating curry almost every day for the last month. There have been about eight small pots of jasmine rice, the perfect accompaniment. It reheats very well and is as tasty the day it was made as it is four days later.
I’ve been using Chaokoh coconut milk which I learned today is problematic for their alleged use of (Im not kidding) forced monkey labor. I suppose I’ll be looking for an alternative.
I happen to have a can of “A Taste of Thai Coconut Milk, unsweetened/first pressing” open in front of me. It’s not super thick. Ingredients are “coconut, water, guar gum (a stabilizer)”. Exactly as written.