Why doesn't coconut oil mix into milk?

[Kenobi]

I've been thinking about good methods to consume coconut oil. One method is through cooking potatoes or eating potato chips fried in coconut oil, but I was thinking about why coconut oil can't mix into milk.

I once tried mixing coconut oil into skim milk, and all it did was float on top. Why does milkfat dissolve into milk, and not coconut oil? When I added gelatin as an emulsifier, I saw droplets of oil dissolved into the milk, but the texture was very inconsistent because of that. So I'm curious, is it possible to dissolve coconut oil into skim milk completely as if it were milkfat?

 

[BingDing]

IIRC, milk fat molecules are bipolar and arranged in micelles, or little drops, with the fat loving ends inward and the water loving ends outward. The micelles can be dispersed in the water part because of that but they aren't really dissolved, hence cream separates in raw milk. CO isn't like that so sits on the top like normal oil.

There's an interesting factoid about phosphorous related to that but I can't remember what it is.

 

[pboy]

yea ive never been able to get fat to emulsify...I think egg yolks can do it, like with hollandaise sauce but I haven't tried it. Its the way the milk fat is structured in phospholipids and proteins...its a really finely built structure like that on purpose to make it easy to digest for babies with a high nutritional value. Fat that isn't already pre emulsified requires bile salts, which are basically a cholesterol attached to an amino acid, and they help disperse fat into liquid like the way milk is...but it is a rather difficult process and it cant be depended on by a baby's liver. Its extremely hard to simulate that outside of the body, im sure you could but it would take a process, and youd need somehow a lot of water soluble amino acids attached to something fat soluble on the other end

 

[mt_dreams]

If you're looking to mix coconut fat with milk, the easiest way to do this is to purchase coconut cream. In the past I have used coconut cream with skim milk with great results. If you're purchasing the coco cream in a tin, just place in fridge/freezer so the cream can part from the coco water. The coco cream I use is half fat (with the rest being water/protein), so you would need to double up the portion if you wanted the same amount of fat as coconut oil.

 

[DaveFoster]

Or you can use a blender. If you do use a blender, you can make an orange Julius with coconut oil, orange juice concentrate, and milk (of course). Add egg yolks if desired.