Cooking Indian curry with yogurt
So, I've worked with Thai curry before and reviewed the post about "When to prefer yogurt, cream, and coconut milk in an Indian vegetarian dish to make it creamy?" but these seem to be concerned with ingredients, not cooking methods.
While working with Thai curry, the best way to keep the milk from curling when it is cooked with the curry paste is to heat the separated coconut cream as you would with butter and then cook the curry paste in the cream until dark grease lines form in the mixture. I'm not sure what the process is called officially (any help here would be appreciated), but it seems to bond the curry paste to the fat of the cream and makes for a smoother dish, and it also allows the thinner part of the coconut milk to mix in smoothly without any separation.
Now that I've explained the method I'm used to, I was wondering how one might prepare traditional Indian curry in a similar fashion. I can see how cream might be prepared in the same way, but does this hold true with yogurt? I read that whole milk yogurt is usually used in Indian cuisine, and maybe that has the appropriate fat content to prepare curry with a similar consistency. Any insight would be appreciated.
Best Answer
Whisking some cornstarch into the yoghurt before adding it is an effective method to limit curdling and is also often found in recipes (caveat: can thicken the sauce more than intended). In other cases, some gram flour (besan) is added (caveat here: needs to get cooked in the dish for a couple minutes, or roasted beforehand, raw besan tastes vile).
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Can you cook yogurt in curry?
You remove a spoonfull of the curry and dump it into the yogurt, then stir immediately. When it is completely absorbed, you add the next spoon. You continue until you have something like a 1:1 mix in the bowl, then dump it into the still cooking curry and stir.Why is yogurt used in Indian cooking?
While Western cooks mostly use yogurt in its raw form for desserts or in drinks, Indian chefs use it to tenderize meat, as a souring agent and as a base for lightly textured curries. In India, yogurt also turns up in desserts and is used to prepare homemade buttermilk.How do you add yogurt to curry without curdling?
First, always cook with room-temperature yogurt. Letting it rise in temperature before you add it to a hot chickpea stew, say, will lessen the chances of it curdling. You can also increase yogurt's stability with flour or cornstarch -- stir in a 1/2 to 1 teaspoon per cup of yogurt before you add it to a dish.What kind of yogurt is used in Indian cooking?
Use plain yogurt, and try to avoid Greek yogurt. Indian yogurt (dahi) is less "solid" than Greek yogurt, and is unflavored. If you only have Greek yogurt on hand, add \u2153 cup of water per 3 cups of Greek yogurt and mix well to bring it to the optimal consistency.How to make: Chicken curry with yogurt
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Answer 2
It depends on what you are cooking. Yogurt is used as marinade for a few barbeque dishes like tandoori chicken, paneer tikka, and it's used in making curries in many dishes as Srilekha mentioned.
Yogurt is added at the end and is cooked no more than 2-5 mins for the simple reason it separates water when cooked at high temperature, which reduces its sourness and creaminess to some extent.
Answer 3
Yoghurt is indeed used in some Indian curries. After preparing the curry paste just add yoghurt and stir. Stirring is important. Stir well till the yoghurt blends in with the curry paste into a smooth curry or it will separate.
Yoghurt is not suitable for all curries in general. Add it for a little sour flavour in the curry.
Answer 4
Yogurt is used as the base of the marinade for the meat (chicken, goat, etc). The masala, which is the base of the curry, is comprised of spices, onions, tomatoes, and ginger/garlic paste. To get the rich, thick, lucious curry you need to slow cook the onions (30-40 min). The onions are what give the curry the consistency you are after.
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