Last Friday my neighbor and I made coconut oil.
When we first arrived here I asked her where to buy coconut oil because I was surprised not to see it for sale on every corner--we are, after all, in the land of coconut trees, and coconut oil is all the rage in America. Surely the people of Vietnam would all be cooking with coconut oil and enjoying its many health benefits? Not so. She was puzzled why I would be asking for it, and when I explained that I liked to cook with it, she expressed surprise and asked why I would do such a thing. She told me that her family in the countryside could make coconut oil (the family already produced peanut oil), and she checked with them and came back with a price. It sounded really high to me, and so I dropped it. I figured I would cook with something else and eat my coconuts fresh on the beach rather than in my stir-fries.
Since that time I did see coconut oil for sale in some places, but it was packaged as a beauty product rather than a food, so I wasn't sure what else might be in it. And it was quite expensive. But then last week that same neighbor told me she had been using coconut oil on her hair and skin and she was ready to make it herself. I told her I wanted in!
The next day she went to the market and bought 6 coconuts. She scraped out the flesh and put it and the coconut water into a large pot. Then she boiled it for ten minutes. (I would have helped her with all this, but she didn't tell me she had started!) After boiling it, she took out the pulp and squeezed all the milk out of it, then refrigerated the liquid overnight. This caused the water to further separate from the cream. At this point, she had a big batch of what you'd find if you opened a can of coconut milk that had separated. This is where I walked into the process.
She was making a fire in her outdoor cooker--I really don't know what else to call it. People use them for eating hotpot outside, or they take them on beach outings and put little grills on top and light charcoal fires underneath. After getting the fire going, we put the coconut milk in a pot and let it simmer. As it cooked, the oil separated from the "meat." At first, the oil still had a watery feel to it, but as the water evaporated and the coconut meat gave out all its oil, it became thick and slippery and very slightly yellowish. The pulp it left behind became very brown and dry. This whole process took about two hours, but I gotta tell you, the two of us were pretty pleased with ourselves for doing nothing and watching oil come out. She had never made it before, and the experience was as novel for her as it was for me. We each got a bit more than a cup of oil for our trouble and our five bucks. The oil smells wonderful. Anna is wanting it for her skin, and I'd love to saute some chicken and chili in it. For now, it sits as a prize in its jar. It's a little bit like canning--once you've finished the process, the wonder of it makes you want to just look at it for a while before you use it.
The browned bit at the end tasted faintly like toasted coconut, but it was obvious most of the flavor had left with the oil. I thought about further toasting the bits and sprinkling them on my granola, but then I remembered that I didn't have any granola and would have to make some of that as well. I opted not to save them (we'd eked every drop of oil out of them, after all), but now that I look at the pictures again, I wish I had. Oh well!
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