Plant-based milk experiments, phase 2: Coconut milk

After last month's unsuccessful experiment with making our own oat milk, I decided to take a different tack with plant-based milks: this "semi-homemade" coconut milk recipe from Our Four Forks. It looked simple enough to make: just combine a can of light coconut milk with two cans of water, add a bit of salt and vanilla, and sweeten to taste. The blog notes that you should "gently shake before each use," but that seemed simple enough to do if I mixed it up in one of the bottles we use for powdered milk.

Well, I tried this last week, and I'm sorry to report that it isn't the perfect low-carbon milk alternative I've been looking for.

The first problem appeared when we went to Trader Joe's for the coconut milk. It cost $1.29 a can, rather than the $1 a can the bloggers said they had paid. Since their recipe made about 5 cups, that worked out to a price of about $4.13 per gallon for just a straight coconut-milk-and-water mixture, without any salt, vanilla, or sugar added. That's nearly twice as much as we normally pay for cow's milk, but I comforted myself with the thought hat it's still cheaper than most commercial plant-based milks, which typically cost around $6 a gallon. And there would be less packaging waste, too—just one recyclable metal can, rather than a plastic-lined cardboard carton that can't be recycled in our curbside collection.

The second problem showed up when I started mixing up the coconut milk. For some reason I'd overlooked the fact that our milk bottles only hold a quart (four cups), and this recipe makes about five cups. The only container I could find big enough to hold it was a gallon-sized plastic pitcher, which doesn't have a snug-fitting lid like the milk bottle. So I had to settle for stirring it thoroughly, rather than shaking it. This wasn't enough to dissolve the coconut milk completely, but I managed to get most of the solids suspended in the liquid.

First I tasted the mixture plain, with nothing added. Not surprisingly, it tasted strongly of coconut—a flavor I happen to like, but one that's definitely not as neutral as milk and wouldn't work in every recipe. It also wasn't as sweet as dairy milk. I added the salt and vanilla and tasted it again, and interestingly, this seemed to make it taste a bit sweeter—but I decided to go ahead and add a bit of sugar anyway. I stirred in a teaspoonful, decided it needed just a bit more, and eventually ended up using about two teaspoons of sugar for five cups of coconut milk. Since we now pay only 80 cents a pound for organic sugar at Costco, that works out to about 1.5 cents' worth of sugar. Add another 8.5 cents for the vanilla and salt, and the price of the milk comes to a total of $4.45 per gallon.

Another thing I checked as I mixed up the milk was its calorie count. According to the label, the can contained six servings of coconut milk, each with 70 calories. That meant the entire batch of milk had 420 calories' worth of coconut milk, plus 36 calories' worth of sugar. Divided by five cups, that's about 91 calories per cup—roughly the same as the skim milk we usually drink.

For my first taste test, I tried the coconut milk straight, as an accompaniment to a chocolate chip cookie. Once again, it tasted like coconut, not like milk, but that worked out fine, since it was compatible with the flavor of the cookie. The more noticeable difference between this and the skim milk I'm used to drinking was the mouthfeel, which was slightly greasy. It wasn't creamy, like whole or 2 percent milk; it felt more like a cup of skim milk with a bit of added oil that coated my mouth and left a faint film on the cup. Still, it was drinkable, so I wasn't too discouraged at this point.

Next, I tried the coconut milk in an egg cream. This was a little more problematic, since the milk had separated slightly since I mixed it up, and even a vigorous stirring didn't dissolve all the solids. But once I mixed it up with the chocolate syrup and seltzer, the coconut oil seemed to blend in fairly well, and the greasiness wasn't noticeable. I noticed that the seltzer didn't create quite as much foam with this coconut milk as it normally does with dairy milk, but that wasn't really a problem. The coconut flavor was only faintly noticeable and didn't clash with the chocolate. At this point, things were looking fairly promising.

By this time, I'd drunk enough of the coconut milk that I thought it would fit into one of our quart-sized milk bottles, which would allow me to shake it rather than stirring it before use. Unfortunately, transferring it from the pitcher to a bottle proved to be a messy and inefficient process. The globs of coconut oil clogged up the funnel, and I had to poke them repeatedly with a bamboo skewer to get them into the bottle. And even then, I was left with a fair amount of fat clinging to the sides of the pitcher, which wasn't that easy to wash off. I assume this problem would have been even worse with full-fat coconut milk, but even with the light stuff, it was pretty bad.

In the morning, Brian tried some of the coconut milk on his cereal and ran into yet another snag: even after shaking, the coconut oil wouldn't dissolve. So he poured some through a coffee filter, straining out the lumps, and poured the strained liquid on his cereal. He said the coconut flavor was compatible with most of the ingredients in his morning mixture—bran flakes, oats, flaxseeds, and walnuts—but interestingly, it clashed faintly with the raisins. So it wouldn't be ideal for his purposes, though the oat milk worked okay for him.

However, when I tried the coconut milk in my morning cocoa, it was an epic fail. Although I shook the bottle as vigorously as I could, the coconut oil just didn't dissolve; it formed a faint film on top of the liquid in the cup. It melted when I heated up the cocoa, but it didn't blend into the liquid; it formed a sort of oil slick on top, and the greasy mouthfeel when I drank it was more pronounced than ever. I was able to finish the cup, but I wasn't enthusiastic about using any more of the stuff. Brian thought maybe he could use it up in a batch of pudding, but he didn't have time, so the remaining cup or so ended up in the compost pile.

So, sadly, it looks like this DIY coconut milk isn't the ideal solution to the milk dilemma either, and I'm not sure what to try next. I noted on a recent trip to Aldi that their almond milk is considerably cheaper than most brands—just $1.89 for a half-gallon, or $3.78 per gallon, which is cheaper than this homemade stuff—but it still has the problems of the heavy water use from almond growing and the packaging waste created by the cartons. Ripple, or pea-protein milk, ticks all the boxes for sustainability and nutrition—according to this piece in Fast Company, its carbon footprint is only 7 percent as large dairy milk's, its water footprint is only 1 percent as large, and it has a comparable amount of protein and more calcium and vitamin D—but it's ludicrously expensive. And while I found a recipe for homemade Ripple at Matthew's Manna, it's frankly more work than we're willing to go through every time we need milk. It looks like our best bet for now may be to stick to cow's milk for a while and see if the price of Ripple drops with rising demand.