A Question About Curd....
@Ruby3881 (1963)
Canada
April 21, 2016 6:38pm CST
I have a quick question for anyone familiar with Indian cuisine. I understand that in India, yogurt is commonly known as "curd," and I'm wondering if this yogurt is generally thick or thin?
I can see where the name might just indicate that the bacteria introduced in the recipe curdles the milk. But to a Western girl, it elicits images of something fairly solid - like cottage cheese ("curds and whey,") or the curd cheese we loved to eat in Quebec.
And yet whenever I have been served yogurt with a meal from the Indian restaurant, that yogurt is really quite thin. It's totally unlike the Balkan style yogurt I've been enjoying for decades, or the Greek yogurt that's popular today.
So help me, dear friends. Is curd a thin dairy product, or a thicker one?
[Image: tohma/Pixabay/CC0]
4 people like this
6 responses
@allknowing (136497)
• India
22 Apr 16
Curd is neither thin nor solid. It is in between. If it is kept in the fridge then it solidifies somewhat.
3 people like this
@Ruby3881 (1963)
• Canada
22 Apr 16
@JudyEv We have an Indian restaurant that opened in town this spring, but I haven't gone there yet. It's a small, mom & pop place with a menu that rotates to cut down on expenses. So your meal choice is determined by when you go.
When we lived in Montreal, we had several Indian food sources to choose from. There were a couple of fast food stands that served only a few dishes like chicken tikka. There were a few buffet restaurants, which were kind of hit and miss. And there was one really nice, sit down restaurant with a very extensive menu. Unfortunately, they were closed for an extended period due to renovations, and when they reopened it was never quite the same. I think they lost too many customers 
1 person likes this
@karjatwala (1120)
• Pune, India
22 Apr 16
Curd is after some additive like lemon or something is added to milk to make it curdle. Yogurt is the thicker type after extracting the water form the curd. Curd is used in a lot of Indian cuisines, and even taken raw after adding sugar or making it more liquid by adding water.
1 person likes this
@karjatwala (1120)
• Pune, India
22 Apr 16
@Ruby3881 Yes curd is added to milk to make fresh curds.
1 person likes this
@Ruby3881 (1963)
• Canada
22 Apr 16
So it is curdled, then. Do you add bacteria (a culture, or some existing yogurt) when making the yogurt? This is how we wold make it here. I was taught to make yogurt by a friend who was from Iran, and I learned the way they had done it traditionally in her family.
@PatZAnthony (14749)
• Charlotte, North Carolina
26 May 16
Not really something we use or are familiar with, but the answer given by Always smiling seems correct.
1 person likes this
@Ruby3881 (1963)
• Canada
27 May 16
Yes, it did help make sense of things. I believe it's a different product though made using a similar process.
@manohar282 (88)
•
22 Jun 16
In India curd is prepared by adding some yogurt to warm milk and keeping it for a few hours so that the bacteria present in the yogurt can act on milk proteins and in the process curdle it. In India its usually consumed mostly in thin form, however excess water could be removed from to make it more hard and then this hardened cheese like curd could be used for preparing other recipes. Apart from consumption of raw curd, buttermilk is also prepared from it by adding some water to it and the blending till it totally turns into liquid form. The blending process separates fat from it and hence we gets both fat and buttermilk.
