How To Make: Make Coconut Oil, the Balinese Way

For centuries, people of the island of Bali have known the coconut to be one of the healthiest and most life-sustaining foods available. Unfortunately, due to a plethora of misinformation created by manufacturers of synthetic oils and nutrient-free juice drinks, the coconut has fallen out of favor even in those countries where it is amply found.

Virgin Coconut Oil (VCO) is the naturally processed, chemical- and additive-free product from fresh coconut meat or its derivative (coconut milk and its residue), which has not been subjected to any further chemical processing after extraction.

There are several methods that can be used to manufacture VCO. Each method falls under in one of three main production processes (From coconut meat, From coconut milk, From coconut milk residue).

Production processes from coconut meat includes the Wet Milling Route, the Desiccated Coconut Route, the Grated Coconut Route, and the Low Pressure Method.

Production processes from coconut milk consists of The Modified Traditional Kitchen Method, the Modified Natural Fermentation Method, and the Centrifuge Process.

The Bawalan - Masa Process pioneered by Engr. Divina Bawalan and Ms. Dina Masa of the Philippine Coconut Authority is the production process from coconut milk residue.

Want to know how to make coconut oil, the Balinese way? Let me show you how we do it at home.

The simplest process I'm going to show you is TheTraditional Balinese Kitchen Method. Below is the step-by-step procedure we personally use to make coconut oil at home. Hope you find it helpful.

Husking the nuts. First, she must tear the husk from the coconut which is deep inside. This old huskers were made of wood.

Husking is hard work.
Split the nuts, remove the water and grate the meat.

remove the water

Split the nuts

grate the meat
Extract the coconut milk from the grated meat. Set aside. Do a second extraction by mixing the coconut residue obtained after the first extraction with water at a ratio of 2 parts residue, 1 part water. Mix well and extract milk from the mixture again.

The grated coconut meat is mixed with warm water..Squeeze it to remove the oil...Strain the coconut cream.. hmm.. more hard work
Let the mixture stand for 6 hours to separate the cream from the skim milk.

Put it under the hot sun shine

Separate the cream (top layer and oily portion) from the skim milk (bottom layer and watery portion).


Place the cream into a cast iron pan and heat over very low fire. During heating, the oil will separate and a proteinaceous residue will form. Continue simmering until all the residual water in the cream is evaporated (Note that the oil will become rancid easily if the residual water is not removed completely). Let cool.