Balinese Coconut Oil
Indonesia is the world’s largest producer and consumer of palm oil, providing half of the world’s supply. However, with its high caloric value and saturated fat content it contributes to weight gain, heart problems and chronic disease. By making coconut oil at home, Balinese people live longer and healthier lives. The process involves breaking a whole coconuts, prying the coconut meal with a knife, grating it by hand, mixing it with water, wringing out the milk through a cheese cloth and boiling for hours on a fire made of coconut husks.
Ingredients
- 4 - 10 mature brown coconuts
- Hot Water
- Tumeric
Tools
- Blender or hand grater
- Chopping board
- Knife
- Blunt object for breaking the coconut - hammer or small axe
- Stainless steel pot for cooking the oil. Do not use non-stick or coated pots for this because during cooking, the coconut oil will get to high temperatures.
- Bowls
- Sieve
Instructions
- Break the coconut with heavy blunt object.
- When done, pry out the coconut meat from the shell with a knife. Once the coconut is mature, the meat should come out of the shell easily.
- Rinse the coconut thoroughly and grate them by hand. Alternatively, you can cut them into small chunks and put them into a high powered blender.
- Boil some water and mix it with cold water to a comfortable temperature. Try to have water as hot as you can comfortably handle it with your bare hands. Extracting coconut milk with hot water gives you more coconut oil than when you extract with warm/lukewarm water. Do not use cold water.
- Mix the grated coconut with the diluted hot water.
- Pour it into a cheesecloth bag to separate the milk from the chaff. Use your hands to wring out as much liquid as possible.
- Add more diluted hot water to the chaff to created more coconut milk.
- Use the cheesecloth to separate the milk from the chaff again.
- Boil the milk for two hours on high heat. We used a fire made out of coconut husk.
- Skim the oil off of the top.
- Boil this oil for one more hour.
- Add tumeric for colour.
- Set the pot aside so that the oil can cool down.
- Sieve the oil with the cheese cloth to remove any charred bits of coconut.
- Store in your cupboard and use when you wish.