Yayla Çorbası

Yoghurt is the whole soup rather than a swirl in it, so the tempering is the entire technique.

Egg. Not vegetarian — contains chicken stock.

Ingredients

• 700 g thick full-fat yoghurt
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons plain flour
• 100 g short-grain rice
• 1.2 litres light chicken stock or water
• 60 g butter
• 2 teaspoons dried mint
• a handful of fresh mint, chopped
• a handful of parsley, chopped
• salt

Method

1. YOGHURT IS THE WHOLE SOUP RATHER THAN A SWIRL IN IT, so the tempering is the entire technique. Seven hundred grams of it into a litre and a bit of stock -- this is a hot yoghurt soup, not a stock soup finished with yoghurt. Which means there is no hiding a split: if the proteins curdle, the soup is grains in whey and there is nothing else in the pan to disguise it. Everything below exists to stop that happening.
2. THE EGG AND FLOUR ARE THE INSURANCE AND BOTH ARE NEEDED. One egg and two tablespoons of flour whisked into the cold yoghurt until perfectly smooth. The flour's starch physically gets between the protein strands; the egg sets around them. With both, the soup can be brought to a bare simmer and held there. With neither, it splits at about 80°C.
3. THE HOT STOCK GOES INTO THE YOGHURT, NOT THE YOGHURT INTO THE STOCK. A ladleful at a time, whisking, until the yoghurt mixture is hot and loose -- half a dozen ladles. Only then does the lot go back into the pan. Done the other way round, the yoghurt hits boiling liquid all at once and curdles before it can disperse. This is the step people skip and it is the one that matters.
4. IT IS WHISKED CONSTANTLY AND IN ONE DIRECTION WHILE IT COMES UP. Not stirred occasionally -- whisked, the whole time, for the five or six minutes it takes to reach a bare simmer. A still patch at the bottom of the pan is where it catches and splits.
5. IT MUST NOT BOIL, AND A BARE SIMMER IS AS FAR AS IT GOES. The surface should barely move. Once it boils, even tempered, the texture goes from velvet to slightly granular and will not come back.
6. THE RICE IS COOKED IN THE STOCK FIRST AND STAYS IN. Twenty minutes in the stock before the yoghurt goes anywhere near, so the starch it sheds is in the stock helping rather than needing to cook later in a liquid that cannot be boiled.
7. The rice simmered in the stock 20 MINUTES, until soft. Kept HOT.
8. The yoghurt, egg and flour whisked in a large bowl until PERFECTLY SMOOTH, with no lumps.
9. Hot stock ladled INTO THE YOGHURT a ladleful at a time, whisking, for about 6 ladles -- until the mixture is hot and loose.
10. The mixture poured back into the pan with the rest.
11. Brought slowly to a BARE SIMMER over a medium-low heat, WHISKED CONSTANTLY, 5 to 6 MINUTES. It must not boil.
12. Salted.
13. The butter melted until foaming, pulled OFF the heat, and the dried mint stirred in for a few seconds.
14. Poured over the soup.
15. The fresh mint and parsley scattered on at the table.
16. TESTED: the soup should be velvet-smooth and opaque. Any graininess means it boiled or the stock went in too fast.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Turkey · All recipes