Coconut oil

[LucyLastic]

This stuff is everywhere. Do any of you use it? And more to the point, does it smell/taste of coconut? I've recently come across loads of recipes that ask for it, but I've never bought any as I'm not overkeen on coconut. I don't mind the occasional Bounty from a tub of Celebrations or whatever, but I'm not a great fan. Are there any brands that you know of that aren't overly coconutty? If not, what would you use to replace it in recipes?

[qbm]

I use Tiana and it is coconutty but if I used it to fry pancakes or onions I wouldn't really notice the coconut taste.

As for what to replace it with, depends on the recipe I suppose - olive oil, rapeseed oil?

I used it to make my own face cream yesterday!

[mamapup]

I like it. It has some really good properties but it's not good for high cholesterol so we don't really use it.

It is supposed to be fab for healthy popcorn but since I love to gobble the kids' popcorn we don't do that either. So we only use it in the odd curry.

[Lily]

I use it mostly for sweet dishes, to replace butter. It's more forgiving for things like frying pancakes, because it has a high burning point. For me, it's too coconutty for savoury recipes, but I love coconut as a sweet flavour. It has a fairly subtle taste but it's definitely there.

[bigcatmaniac]

I find it too coconutty for savoury recipes too - unless it's a Thai curry with coconut milk in anyway. It's great for popcorn, baking, cooking sweet stuff like pancakes as said before though. I use different brands - currently working my way through a massive tub from Costco.

Big cat