COCONUT : PART 12

I think everyone know about coconut oil and have ever used it for cooking or other purposes.
There two kind of coconut oil, these are coconut oil and virgin coconut oil (VCO).
Coconut oil is usually well known as cooking oil.
Now, we will talk about the common coconut oil, or here we call it as 'minyak kelapa' and Javanese call it as 'lenga klentik'.

There are two basic way on making coconut oil, these are dry process and wet process.
First, we we talk about the dry process.
On dry process, the coconut pulps will dried directly with sun drying process or using oven.
Sun drying is the cheapest way on drying coconut pulp, but it needs 5-7 days on the full sunny day.
Using oven, the drying process just needs up to one day, but that's much expensive.
Oven is usually used during the rainy season, cause almost there's no sunny day along that season.
And also the rain water make contamination on the pulp, that it could decline the quality of the coconut oil.

The dry coconut pulp is called 'kopra'.
The kopra is ready to be processed if it has brownish color, wrinkled texture, curled shape and the water content is under 5%.
The first process is chopping the kopra using machine until it has very small shape.
Then the chopped kopra will be pressed on the pressing machine to remove the oil from the kopra.
Pressing process will be repeated twice or even more to remove all the oil content.
This process produce crude coconut oil (CCO) and also residual stuff that we call it as 'blendo' or 'plendo'.
The crude coconut oil then will be strained to get the clear oil.
Straining process also using strain paper.
To relieve the water content that remain, we can use activated carbon.
Water content on the oil will cause oxidation that make the oil have bad smell or we call it 'tengik'.

Now, we get coconut oil that has yellowish clear color.
And it ready to be packed.
Next, we will talk about the wet process on making coconut oil.
Please enjoy this series and have a wonderful week.