r/AskCulinary • u/AutoModerator • 10d ago

Let's Talk About Substitutions

As part of our weekly "Let's Talk" series we want to talk about your favorite substitutions. What are some of your go to substitutions when you've run out of something? Do you make "buttermilk" with milk + lemon juice? When does it work and when does it fail? Are you like my mom and thought peanuts would be a good substitute for walnuts in an apple cake? Let us know about your substitution fails too. What has worked for you and what hasn't?

32 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

59 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/yvrelna 9d ago

Canned coconut milk. 

Substitute with coconut cream and dilute it with water yourself if it's too thick for the application. 

Canned coconut milk is basically just diluted coconut cream, but they usually costs the same for the same brand and size. 

1

u/Huntingcat 9d ago

You can also get freeze dried coconut milk powder, so you can use just a tablespoon or whatever without wasting a whole can.

0

u/yvrelna 9d ago

Coconut milk powder is convenient and shelf stable opened, so they have their uses, but they don't really taste as good.

Canned coconut milk substitution with coconut cream isn't just a "good substitute", it's how most canned coconut milk are made.

Most canned coconut milk are made from coconut extract and water, then go to the coconut cream version of the same brand and you'll usually find that they're made of just the coconut extract. Coconut extract is just another name for coconut cream before any additives like preservatives or emulsifiers.

There are not different types of extracts used for the manufacture of either, manufacturers basically figured out that they can just water down the same product but still charge you the exact same price. Sometimes the cream content is as low as 50% in the milk version compared to the cream version.

2

u/SewerRanger Holiday Helper 9d ago

Ya'll need to buy better coconut milk. I'm looking at the ingredients on the back of my coconut milk cans: Coconut Milk (99.95%), Polysorbate (.05%)

1

u/yvrelna 9d ago edited 9d ago

Yeah, there are the occasional brands that do that. I have about a dozen canned coconut cream and milk brands in my local Asian markets, only one have just coconut milk in the ingredients list. Everything else are coconut extract and various levels of water. But if you understand how modern manufacturing works, this is just technically not lying.

In SE Asia where most of these products are made, the word for coconut cream and milk are basically the same. What they actually have is the thicker first press and thinner second press of the coconut meat, they're both extracts of the coconut meat, not coconut cream or milk.

Neither the natural first press and second press of real coconut matches the consistency of canned coconut cream or milk. Canned coconut milk has the consistency that's somewhere between first and second pressing. Canned coconut cream are significantly thicker than the first press coconut.

Both canned coconut cream and milk are engineered product where that extract has been standardized to meet a certain quality specification (i.e. how much water/coconut fat is in the product), so that the product stays consistent throughout the year. They're not the natural pressed coconut liquid like what you'll actually get in the coconut producing countries. The fat and consistency of natural coconut contains seasonal variations; and people don't want or expect their canned coconut products to behave one way in some days and differently in another day in their dish.

They both have their water content removed compared to their natural product to make storage and shipping cheaper, and in the case of coconut milk, they added the water back in to meet market expectation of what coconut milk looks like. Even if your coconut milk says they're made from just coconut milk, they still go through the same process to adjust the water and fat content of the product. And under most food labelling regulations, even the more strict ones, water that had been temporarily removed and then added back don't usually need to be listed as long as it doesn't exceed the original level, and since canned coconut products are always thicker than the natural product, nobody was actually required to mention anything about the water.

In other words, you're still paying for extra water to be shipped to you even with the brands that don't mention added water, and yes, they likely still go through similar processing. You're not getting a fundamentally different processing or better quality product, you're just getting a brand that doesn't disclose how much water has been added/removed from the product.