Can you freeze coconut milk?

[Rhys W]

Just making a nice butternut squash & chickpea curry and I've opened a can of coconut milk - it's very rich so I only needed a couple of spoonfuls. There'll be one portion for me now and 3 portions for the freezer but I have 3/4 tin of coconut milk left. Will it survive freezing? Seems very wasteful if I can't make use of it.

[spesh]

http://homecookingwell.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/science-in-the-kitchen-can-you-freeze-coconut-milk/

Well, the short answer is: of course you can. You can freeze anything. But what we really want to know here is: can you freeze coconut milk without harming its quality? And the answer to that question is: sort of.

...

So here’s what I’ve found from repeated experiments: coconut milk easily freezes in tupperware into an opaque white block, as you’d expect. It has a quirk on thawing, though — it stays solid much longer than you’d expect the equivalent block of ice to do. If you put it in the fridge to thaw, it may take several days. Overnight thawing in the fridge will result in a still-near-solid block.

ETA - I tend to use creamed coconut, which keeps in the fridge for ages - for use in curry sauces, just crumble in with enough hot/boiling water to get the right consistency.

[Mrs Pingu]

I've frozen it. It doesn't look amazing when you defrost it, but it works ok in a sauce.

[Rhys W]

That's what I suspected - not perfect, but ok once stirred in to a hot saucepan. I'll give it a go.

I've used the solid blocks dissolved in hot water before, this canned stuff looks much nicer.

[plum]

I just keep one of the solid soap bar type blocks in the fridge and cheesegrate it straight into the curry. They can last for months, though I usually use them up quicker than that.

[spesh]

... solid soap bar type blocks ...

 

[Julian]

Just making a nice butternut squash & chickpea curry and I've opened a can of coconut milk - it's very rich so I only needed a couple of spoonfuls. There'll be one portion for me now and 3 portions for the freezer but I have 3/4 tin of coconut milk left. Will it survive freezing? Seems very wasteful if I can't make use of it.

Make four times the amount of curry next time, using all the tin of coconut milk, and freeze the end product.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I'm not surprised it's difficult to thaw. We had a bottle of coconut oil which solidified at room temperature sometime during the winter - that's Bangalore winter, so still well above freezing point, it might have been say 7C overnight - and it never properly liquified again even during the 35C summer.

[plum]

... solid soap bar type blocks ...

 

I know what you're thinking but you can't take a cheesegrater to the other kind. 60 seconds in the microwave does the trick though, coincidentally also works quite well in a curry.

[Rhys W]

I froze 2 portions in little plastic containers. I threw one in a big wok-full of curry sauce earlier, it bobbed around like a bar of soap but dissolved within a couple of minutes. No curdling or unsightly separation or anything, so I give this the