Curdling Yogurt strangeness

[Carlovski]

Last night I was making an impromptu salmon curry (I had some salmon I needed to use, and fancied something spicy...)

I fried some onions, added garlic, ginger chilli and spices and then added yogurt - which pretty instantly curdled horribly - I know there are things you should do - add it a bit at a time, use cornflour etc but I've never had this happen before.

It's looking fairly horrible now but I press on regardless and slide in some cubes of salmon fillet. Two minutes later neasrly all the curdling has dissapeared

Any clue why this happened? I've lent someone my copy of on Food and Cooking so couldn't try and look it up.

[Digijam]

Hi Carlovski,

I believe yoghurt is similar to single cream, in that the fact content isn't high enough to bind the casein proteins sufficiently, so the proteins clump together and cook, resulting in curdling at higher temperatures. McGee basically suggests to avoid taking the yoghurt near the boil and removing as much of the whey as possible beforehand. Rapid mixing in is also usually mentioned, to help disperse it before anything gets a chance to set, I guess.

But how you fixed the curdling I have no idea.

Strangely I did notice a Madhur Jaffrey programme the other week, where she didn't seem at all bothered about highly visible curdling in one of her completed dishes.

[Carlovski]

Just had the leftovers for lunch (Stinking out the office!)

Not a trace of curdling in there - most strange.

The only things I can come up with are

1 - Temperature, Adding the salmon would have dropped the temp fairly rapidly.

2 - Protein, could the fish protein have done something to stabilise the mixture?

3 - Some sort of enzyme - is their anything weird in Salmon?

It was very tasty by the way - even better today (Didn't even overcook the fish too much reheating it!) Lots of cardamon and cassia bark in there - very aromatic but still with a good chilli kick.

[Milagai]

Just had the leftovers for lunch (Stinking out the office!)

Not a trace of curdling in there - most strange.

The only things I can come up with are

1 - Temperature, Adding the salmon would have dropped the temp fairly rapidly.

2 - Protein, could the fish protein have done something to stabilise the mixture?

3 - Some sort of enzyme - is their anything weird in Salmon?

It was very tasty by the way - even better today (Didn't even overcook the fish too much reheating it!) Lots of cardamon and cassia bark in there - very aromatic but still with a good chilli kick.

←

any mustard in the recipe?

mustard is an emulsifier, as far as i know.

maybe one of the other ingredients in there

is a hitherto unknown emulsifier...

milagai

[Carlovski]

Nope - no mustard, the only things I added after the curdling incident were the salmon and some green chile peppers

[k43]

I make my mother's Mock Stroganoff (ground beef, Lawrey's, lots of pepper and paprika, served over rice). She added sour cream near the end, but I mix it 50% with yogurt, or all yogurt. The yogurt tends to break over heat, so I let the dish cool as I dish up the rice and then stir in the yogurt. Sometimes I put the yogurt on as a topping to each plate, so each person can stir it in.

This should work with your curry, too.

Labni will be even better.