All posts tagged: "coconut milk"

Cheap is expensive.

VERY EXPENSIVE.

How many times have you been told that? But do you listen? NO.

I know cheap is expensive. In fact most time I will not buy cheap brands but sometimes the Kikuyu in me just can not resist what SEEMS like a bargain. The key word there is SEEMS.

So a couple of months ago as I was doing my usual shopping for coming back to Kakuma. Remember when you would shop before boarding school? Yes it’s more or less the same, 2 soaps, 3 tissues, quencher juice, tooth paste, blueband etc. Anyway I digress  back to my shopping. I always get coconut milk so when I got to them I noticed there was a new brand. As we all know coconut milk is not cheap some go for as much as 350 a can. For a girl who needs at least 5 that adds up to at least 1500 shillings. So when I saw one that cost about 200, do not remember the exact price just that it was around 100 shillings cheaper than most, I got very curious.

So in my head I wondered why it was so much cheaper. But again I rationalized that coconut milk is coconut milk. You know the way canned sweet corn is canned  sweet corn and canned mushrooms is canned mushrooms. I told my self that it can’t be that bad maybe just a little bit lighter but boy was I wrong.

So I picked my 5 cans of KENTASTE coconut milk. WORST MISTAKE EVER!! GOSH!! First time I cooked with it my food tasted funny, so I said maybe it the spices second time same thing and the smell was also not that appealing. So I decided to open one can and just look at it and when I smelled it, it smelled like chemicals. So I opened a can of another brand don’t remember which one and the difference was ALARMING. So I poured out the Kentaste. I put the thought at the back of my head till a few months ago when I was visiting a friend. I was going to cook so I carried my ingredients and found that they had Kentaste but thank God I had carried my own coconut milk on explaining the difference and showing them my friend agreed.

Now yesterday, after like 4 months, I decided to make Mahamris. I remembered the Kentaste and thought that maybe I could use that coz the flour, sugar and cardamom would surely mask the taste. I opened a can and felt sick immediately. I was a punget annoying disgusting eeeew smell with a hint coconut. So what I decided not to use it. I opened a can of Royal Umbrella Coconut milk and WOW what I got was a nice rich coconut smell that was pure white.

If you look at the photo below closely you can actually see the difference in colour.

Royal Umbrella is a rich white color while Kentaste looks diluted. To be honest the smell of Kentaste on its own and in food is really disgusting so I poured it out.

Do not buy it. Yes it cheap. Yes it Kenyan. We would love to support local industries but they also need to step up and give us good quality products that compete well with the rest.

PLEASE NOTE

I am not marketing Royal Umbrella it is not the coconut milk I always use, its just what I had yesterday. They have not paid me to advertise them nor has anyone paid me for this review. I am not saying you should use Royal Umbrella just that you SHOULD NOT use KENTASTE. The opinions on this post are MY OWN