9 Clever Ways To Use Canned Coconut Milk

Coconut milk may be a top contender for the unsung hero of your pantry: it is vegan, flavorful, and, like the coolest kid in town, can fit in anywhere. It doesn't have to be — or, better yet, deserve to be — relegated to simple smoothies or soups, as great as coconut milk is in those contexts.

If you're wondering exactly how coconut milk is made, just know that the industrial, emulsifier-heavy commercial process is actually easy to replicate at home. You can simply blend dry shredded coconut with water and strain; that's all it takes. Luckily, the canned stuff is delicious, convenient, and always there for you. Make sure you know the exact difference between coconut milk and coconut cream: the former has a milky consistency while the latter has a thicker one, akin to heavy cream. They have similar uses, but coconut milk is a bit more versatile and best for the applications we'll get into.

Fortunately, there are plenty of creative uses for coconut milk. From sweetening your traditional breakfast to crafting decadent desserts and cocktails, it's time to give this humble can the shine it deserves, as a portal to a whole new kitchen.

Like all great breakfast foods, French toast has an easy recipe for success: milk, eggs, sugar, maybe a touch of cinnamon, which you use to soak some stale (or lightly toasted) bread before frying to a golden finish. Here, the simplicity of a classic French toast recipe is an invitation for experimentation. Coconut milk is an unexpected welcome to the party, adding a nutty, toasted complexity to what is usually a straightforwardly sweet dish.

Simply replace milk with coconut milk, and whisk in your eggs, sugar, salt, and spices. Soak a thick, enriched bread like challah or brioche in the mixture and fry in a saucepan. Serve with caramelized fruit or jam and maple syrup. It's a great way to make French toast dairy-free, for those around your table that aren't able to indulge in traditional French toast as often as others. This is just one delicious trick to upgrade your French toast, a tropical variation on a classic.

Perhaps the crowning jewel of Thai desserts, mango sticky rice has only a few components, which means they each must be at the top of their form so the dish can sing. The dish, called khao nieow mamuang, uses the ok rong or the nam dok mai varieties of mangoes most traditionally. These sweet and smooth mangoes speak for themselves, as they have to in any dish that rests upon the quality of its ingredients.

The short list of ingredients obscures a winding process: you steam some glutinous rice and then combine with a mixture of coconut milk and sugar, which, when cool, coalesces into a sticky, coconut-forward dessert, like a tighter, gooier rice pudding. Traditionally, the dish is topped with crispy mung beans, which adds a welcome crunch factor.

Though mango is synonymous with sticky rice, other fruits are begging to be paired with this sweet coconut milk rice. Reinvent the dish by switching out the mango for strawberry, and you'll have another winner in the coconut milk book.

Once you add coconut milk to your curry, it'll be difficult to imagine one from now on without at least a splash from the can. Common in Southeast Asian curries, coconut milk adds creaminess and body without the dairy. With spices and vegetables, it also becomes a great stock to braise chicken or beef, resulting in tender and coconutty meat that melts wonderfully into your curry.

Another classic from your favorite Thai takeout is massaman curry, a less fiery stew than the Indian curries you might be more familiar with. Massaman is made with dried chili, coriander, cardamom, cumin, and other warm spices, which stew together perfectly with coconut milk. A good introduction to coconut milk curries is this Swiss chard iteration with potatoes and chickpeas, a sort of sister to massaman that shares many of the same spices with an added layer of sweet depth thanks to tomato paste.

A Malaysian coconut jam made from eggs, coconut milk, and sugar, kaya is caramelized gold destined to be spread on toast. It is often made with pandan leaves, lending a grassy complexity to the jam. You can steep these leaves in the coconut milk custard as it cooks on the stove, and use pandan extract for a brilliant green color and a stronger pandan flavor. Homemade kaya keeps in your fridge for a week, but you'll be scraping the bottom of the jar long before then.

Much like kaya jam itself, kaya toast is much more delicious than the sum of its parts. One of the street foods that define Singapore, kaya toast is traditionally buttered and served with hard-boiled eggs that are seasoned in an umami bomb of dark soy sauce and white pepper. Try it in your kitchen with your homemade stuff and let food do what it does best: transport.

The rewards of making cocktail and coffee syrups at home exceeds the trouble exponentially. They can sit in your fridge for a few weeks, and you can add them to whatever you want. Coconut milk is a perfect vessel for a sugary syrup that wakes up your cocktails and coffee. Boil the contents of the can with sugar (you can vary the amount of sugar, depending on how sweet and syrupy you want the mixture), and let cool. This syrup also goes great on pancakes, waffles, and, for a double dose of coconut, on the French toast listed, as well.

For cocktails, a few glugs of this syrup will add an unexpected creaminess to your drinks. Whenever you see simple syrup on any of these classic cocktails, replace with this coconut syrup to bring the beach to your dining room. Add a vanilla bean, warm spices like cardamom, or orange peel to build flavor here; alternatively, replace part of the sugar with dark brown sugar, maple syrup, or honey for more exciting variations.

If "overnight oats" doesn't make your taste buds buzz and your creative juices flow instantly, then adding coconut milk might be the antidote for your breakfast blues. Coconut milk both smells and tastes toasty, and there's nothing better to wake up to in the morning. When combined with chia seeds, oats, and a sweetener like maple syrup, you'll end up with a creamy, filling breakfast pudding. It is important to use rolled oats instead of quick-cooking, as they will retain their texture overnight. Chia seeds as well go a long way in binding the mixture together.

The toppings are where you can really go crazy here. Greek yogurt, berries, or chopped nuts are classics for a reason, and all go great with the creamy dreaminess of coconut milk. An almost perfect addition would be toasted coconut flakes, which become crunchy once golden and wrap you up in the flavors of coconut.

Coquitos are a perfect drink to have during the holiday season; a Puerto Rican eggnog with a bit more nuance and excitement. Unlike eggnog, however, coquito doesn't require any troublesome whipping of egg yolks and whites or any delicate folding together. Instead, you can just chuck all of the ingredients — coconut milk, coconut cream, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla — on the stove and simmer, and then let steep and cool in the fridge for a few hours.

There is also usually sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk; to make this vegan, you can use sweetened condensed coconut milk (which will show up again on this list) and more coconut milk instead of evaporated. Though it is traditionally a rum-based cocktail, feel free to sub out the rum for bourbon, or omit it entirely for a smooth, aromatic mocktail.

One of the greatest joys of coconut milk is how similar it acts to regular dairy milk, so those delicious concoctions which were once unobtainable for those who are dairy free is easily within reach. Dulce de leche is one such concoction. With canned coconut milk, you can make a vegan version that has the same amount of caramelly nourishment as the original if not more, thanks to coconut's naturally bronzed flavor. You simply cook coconut milk and sugar on the stove until caramel-covered, adding baking soda to help keep the mixture emulsified and smooth. Sandwich it between cookies, spread it on toast, or make this ingenious dulce de leche mousse recipe.

Alternatively, if sweetened condensed coconut milk is more of a mainstay in your pantry than plain old coconut milk, you can boil that entire can in a pot of water on the stove. It takes three hours (plus the very essential cooling), but the process is largely hands-off and you'll be left with a dairy-free dulce de leche that's even better than store bought.

Though coconut milk seems especially aligned with the world of the sweet, it frequently dips its toe into the savory realm in irresistible ways. Using coconut milk as a marinade for chicken wings is one of the beautiful glimpses of the limitless possibilities of the canned white gold. Coconut milk is a great vessel for spice — as seen in the coconut curry above — and wings truly sing when loaded with spice. For a worldly take on buffalo wings, add cayenne, turmeric, cumin, coriander, and any other curry spices in your cabinet to coconut milk and let it be the blanket for your wings it was always meant to be.

There are countless ways to cook chicken wings, but the best way to ensure finger-licking taste and texture is a smoked-then-fried method, according to an expert; this ensures smoky barbecue flavor as well as a crisp skin. With coconut milk, this method would be a total, outrageous winner.