What to do with the rest of a tin of coconut milk
Coconut milk comes in 400ml tins. A curry for one person uses perhaps a third of it. The rest goes in the fridge in the tin, separates into a solid cap and a grey liquid, and gets poured away four days later.
How long it actually keeps
Three or four days in the fridge, decanted out of the tin into a container. It will separate — that is normal and not a sign it has gone off. Stir or whisk it back together, and if it has gone thick, warming it will loosen it. It freezes well too, and the separation matters even less once it is going into something hot.
Five things to do with the rest
Cook rice in it
Replace a third of the water with coconut milk. It turns a plain side into the best part of the plate, and it uses the awkward remainder exactly.
Make a soup out of it
Coconut milk, stock, ginger, lime and whatever vegetable is going soft. Fifteen minutes, and it is better than the sum of its parts.
Use it in porridge or overnight oats
It is not only for savoury food. Oats made with coconut milk are richer than milk and it is a use that does not need another shop.
Freeze it in an ice cube tray
Cubes go straight into the next curry from frozen. This is the single most useful thing to do with an awkward remainder of anything liquid.
Whisk it into a dressing or a marinade
With lime, chilli and fish sauce or soy, it dresses a slaw or coats chicken before it goes in the oven.
What not to do
Do not store it in the open tin, and do not judge it by the separation. Most of the coconut milk thrown away in this country was perfectly good and looked wrong.
The better fix is not buying it twice
All of the above is damage limitation. The actual problem is that the pack was bought for one meal and nothing else in the week was planned around it.
Coconut milk has not yet turned up in one of our plans often enough to quote a real note for it, so this page does not invent one. The principle is the same as the half tin of tomatoes: decide what the rest is for before you open it, and it stops being a problem.
14 dinners for £19. First one free, on screen, before you decide.