Coconut water substitutes

Unglamorous and genuinely the best answer for cooking. Coconut water is about 95 percent water, and the two things it contributes beyond that are a trace of salt and a trace of sweetness.

Best for

coconut rice, rice and peas, fish tea and broth, cornmeal porridge, braises, boiling ground provisions

You lose the light nutty aroma, so the dish tastes cleaner and slightly less rounded, and in a plain coconut rice that difference is noticeable. In a heavily seasoned pot with thyme, scallion, pepper and pimento in it, almost nobody can tell. Use unrefined or brown sugar rather than white if you want a fractionally closer match to the caramel edge of bottled coconut water.

The right move when the coconut flavour is the point rather than the liquid. Diluting the milk brings its fat down to a level that behaves like a cooking liquid.

Best for

coconut rice, rice and peas, curries, stewed fish, porridge, smoothies

This is richer and rounder than coconut water and definitely more coconut-tasting, and the liquid goes opaque white, so the finished rice looks creamy rather than clear-cooked. It also softens the grains slightly because of the fat. In a drink it is cloudy and heavier on the tongue, which is fine in a smoothie and wrong in a cocktail. Add a pinch of salt, since coconut milk has almost none of coconut water's mineral edge.

The thin drinking coconut milk sold in cartons next to the almond milk, not the canned stuff. It is already diluted to roughly the right body.

Best for

smoothies, iced drinks, porridge, rice, chia puddings

Convenient and mild, but it is creamy and slightly gummy from added stabilisers where coconut water is thin and clean, and even the unsweetened versions taste sweeter and blander than the real thing. Read the label, because most sweetened cartons carry a lot of added sugar and will make a savoury rice dish taste like dessert.

For drinks, smoothies and cocktails, these are the closest things in a supermarket in terms of body and sweetness level: light, clear-ish, mildly sweet, no fat.

Best for

smoothies, cocktails, agua frescas, iced tea, punch

Both are sweeter and much more obviously fruity than coconut water, which is sweet in a flat, mineral, almost savoury way, so a cocktail built on either tastes fruitier and less refreshing. Add a small pinch of salt and a squeeze of lime and it gets surprisingly close. Do not use either in a savoury pot of rice.

Not so much a substitute as the same ingredient in a shelf-stable form, and worth knowing about because both keep in the cupboard for months.

Best for

coconut rice, drinks, cocktails, broths, anywhere the recipe says coconut water

Canned young coconut water often comes with jelly pieces and a little added sugar, so drain it and cut back any sugar in your recipe. Both taste slightly cooked and less bright than fresh, in the same way canned pineapple differs from fresh, but in a cooked dish that difference disappears completely.

The honest verdict. If you wanted a glass of jelly coconut water on ice, nothing on this list is going to satisfy you, and the salted-sugar-water trick that works beautifully in a pot of rice tastes like exactly what it is in a glass.

Best for

drinking straight

Fresh young coconut water has a faint sulphurous nuttiness and a mineral finish that no fruit juice imitates. Bottled and boxed coconut water is a fair distant second and is what most people buy anyway. If it is the drink you want, buy the bottle rather than trying to build one.