Forum: cooking.stackexchange.com
Tags: <substitutions><milk><evaporated-milk><curry>
Title: Is sweetened condensed milk a substitute for evaporated milk?
Question: I have a recipe for Thai Green Curry that calls for evaporated milk, which I don't have. I do have sweetened condensed milk, will that do?

Answers:
sents: text: No.
text: Sweetened condensed milk has a 40% sugar content.
text: It is very sweet, suitable for desserts and such.
text: It is entirely too sweet to substituted into a curry.
text: The consistency is drastically different.
text: Evaporated milk is about the same consistency as heavy cream.
text: Sweetened condensed milk, because of its high sugar content, is more the consistency of a warm caramel.
text: Also, they are different colors, evaporated milk is white, sweetened condensed is light brown.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/60/hobodave
score: 19
sents: text: (not directly answering the question).
text: As others have said, it's not a good substitution.
text: If you had asked what I would replace it with, I'd personally use coconut milk, because that's what I have in my pantry, and I like how it works in curries.
text: A closer substitution would be half-and-half or light cream, but they would just have a closer fat ratio as evaporated milk, they wouldn't have the sugar and such concentrated as well.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/67/Joe
score: 6
sents: text: They are nearly identical, if you don't count the sweetened bit, it's around 40% sugar, while evaporated milk is just milk with around 60% of the water removed.
text: You might be able to substitute it in that particular recipe, if you were planning on making it sweet, and use a bit less than the recipe calls for.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/1363/dbonomo
score: 4
sents: text: The two are similar, obviously the sugar in sweetened condensed milk is the big difference.
text: They both start the same way, about 60% of the water is removed from milk by boiling at reduced pressure and temperature.
text: Evaporated milk is then sterilized by heating it which gives it a caramel flavor.
text: Sweetened condensed milk isn't sterilized the same way, instead sugar is added and that keeps bacteria from growing in it.
text: (There are other steps for both that I've left out, see Wikipedia and this book excerpt.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/266/Ward - Reinstate Monica
score: 4
sents: text: It's going to be really, really sweet.
text: If you don't like that, then no, you can't.
text: If, however, you have my vicious sweet tooth, it can be a neat variant.
text: I personally love to switch condensed milk for evaporated in a potato soup and add ham.
text: The final soup is sweet enough to be a dessert, but still quite tasty.
text: ....
text: I now want to try it in a curry, actually.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/6321/J.T. Hurley
score: 3

Summary of the answers:
The two are similar apart from the fact that sweetened condensed milk is around 40% sugar. For this reason, it would not be a good substitution in a curry.
While the consistency is similar, it has too much sugar to be a good substitution.