Coconut Milk/Cream

That can be avoided if it is important to you. Why is it important to you?

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Well, because many people including me are sensitive or allergic to sulphur preservatives.

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Hi @JMR, welcome to the community.

Usually tinned foods such as coconut, milk/cream donā€™t have preservatives added as the canning (and sterilising) process negates the need. It potentially added to tinned fish, fruit juices and soups.

Do you have examples of where sulphur preservatives have been added to tinned coconut milk/cream? I can see there is potential inclusion in dried forms.

It is also worth noting that coconuts are naturally high in sulphur.

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I wonder if any of this product is reconstituted from dried product and therefore potentially may have sulphur residues/contamination. Dried Apricots are often sulphur dosed to keep them yellow, if someone was to re-hydrate the apricots and then make juice/nectar this would include sulphur.

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True, but I wonder if coconut milk/cream is. Most seems to come from Thailand or other countries known for plantation coconuts. It is worth noting that the Ayam powdered coconut milk is preservative free (and wouldnā€™t have sulphur preservatives added).

There are reports that sulphur preservatives are used in desiccated coconutā€¦but I canā€™t find any information that tinned coconut milk/cream pose any problems to those with 220-228 sulphite preservative intolerances.

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Thanks for the welcome @phb. But no, I was responding to a post suggesting dehydrated coconut instead of tinned. Dried coconut products often contain these preservatives. I need to learn to quote what Iā€™m responding to, as the forum leaves replies isolated from what is being replied to, unless you are quick.

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Off topic, but this is one bane of my life. Sulphur preservatives donā€™t like me at all, along with various other foods. So I often buy from our local ā€˜organicā€™ supplier. Many times Iā€™ve purchased fruit loaves/breads/buns that are said to be preservative-free that contain dried apricots. You would assume that they use preservative-free apricots. But my experience shows this is most often not true. One company I contacted actually said that they try to use preservative-free apricots but ā€œif theyā€™re hard to get we substitute normal dried apricotsā€! Huh? I have tried to get Choice/ACA to investigate the whole matter of ā€˜organicā€™, both food and clothing, but with no success. Clothing is even worse.

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You can use the quote buttonā€¦

Or, the easier option is to highlight the text you wish to respond and then hit quote when it appears.

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I have no problem with sulphur preservatives but very sensitive to an excess of amines which unfortunately are in all the yummy things such as chocolate, tasty cheese, tomatoes and alcoholic beverages among other things.
Frankly, Iā€™d be very wary of buying something from oversees that did not have preservatives.
By the way, why does this site use an American spelling spell checker?

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I believe that this is due to the language settings that a browser uses to read these pages. If it is set to US English then the spell check is based on US English, if set to Australian or UK English the spell check will be based on those.

In Firefox this setting is in Options (accessed from the 3 horizontal bars on the Browser bar) > General then scroll down to Language and Appearance then select your language from the selection bar found there. You will need to add the language you want first and move it up to the top of the choices and for English there are 2 other choices beyond US and they are Canadian & UK. You can also choose what language a page is using to display the page contents (if the page has these choices), default is generally en-US but you can add en-AU as well as a number of other English choices.

In Chrome in Settings (accessed by clicking on the 3 vertical dots on the menu bar) > Advanced > Languages you will find a drop down choice for languages. You will need to add English (Australia) and move English (Australia) to the top choice. Once changed move to the part titled ā€œUse spell check forā€ and turn on English (Australia) and turn off English (United States) using the sliders there.

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The other place could be is if you have installed a separate spell checker extension or automatic language switcher to your browser. To change the language in these, you will need to open the extension in the browser and change the language to Australian (or if this option does not exist, as a second best option UK English). Each extension will have slightly different ways to change languages, if changing language option is available. For language switcher, you may have to set the default language for the browser and possibly also for the Community website.

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You are right. I use MS Edge as the browser. There was a recent update. It seems it hadnā€™t carried over my preferences and defaulted to American. Iā€™ve corrected it. All good now. Sorry for being so quick to assume the problem was your end.

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No problem, glad it is sorted out for you.

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I buy a 200ml UHT carton of SSM Coconut cream from Woolworths for less than $2 . It is 99.9% coconut extract, and is as good as Ayams.

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Good to know, I will see if its available in online shopping

Is The Epicurious review about US products ? I donā€™t recognize any of the brands. If so, its not locally helpful. I would like to see a review of Australian brands by Choice. Last week I made Chia coconut pudding using Ayam brand and found it was lacking in a full coconut flavour. I mixed ā€œcoconut milkā€ and ā€œcoconut creamā€ Even the cream was significantly lacking in flavour. What has happened to Aymanā€™s product? Very disappointing.

There is always the option to make your own. If only once to have a basis for comparing canned/processed with the traditional for flavour and substance.

ā€˜Coconut milk and cream | SBS Food

Itā€™s worthwhile keeping in touch with some of the regular Asian style cooking programs. I recollect several times observing Adam Liaw and others demonstrate how to split a fresh coconut, extract the flesh and make your own cream and milk.

For a Choice review of the commercial products it may prove a useful reference point to test several different techniques for making your own. How successful is each and is it worthwhile compared to canned? @BrendanMays

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You can cheat and make it using desiccated coconut. Mix DC in equal measure with very hot water and food process for a minute or two. Transfer into a clean coarse cotton cloth in and over a bowl. Pull up all the ends and edges and squeeze out the milk into the bowl. You can compost the fibre residue or add it to other dishes as you wish.

Make sure your DC is fresh, that is off-white not tan or yellow and it smells good on its own. The oil will go rancid eventually, the product does not have an indefinite shelf life.

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Thanks syncretic for a very interesting and useful post.
I buy all my coconut milk/cream in powder form and just make up as I need it. Iā€™m sure itā€™s probably not quite as good as the Ayam tinned stuff, but it does the job at reasonable cost - I can fine-tune strength, dilution, dispersion etc. I like the hack for making your own from desiccated coconut. I always wondered if something like that could be done.

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