Believe me, both Package Coconut milk or Freshly extracted coconut milk both work. It is obvious that freshly extracted coconut milk does not contain preservatives; costs less, however, tedious to extract. On the other hand, packaged coconut milk mostly contains preservatives, high the price yet easy to use! Both have their own pros and cons. I mostly use packaged coconut milk unless Mehebub is ready to help me with coconut scrapping!