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).