Skillet Turkey in Sour Cream Sauce
A juicy, wholesome turkey dinner made with sour cream! This skillet turkey in a creamy sauce fits right in at any table. Cook it for a weeknight dinner and serve it over whatever side you like — it comes out tender, moist, and full of flavor.
Cooking method
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Step 1:
How do you make skillet turkey in sour cream? Gather your ingredients. Use any vegetable oil you like, and any fat percentage of sour cream. Any cut of turkey works here, so take your pick: breast, legs, thighs, and so on. Boneless fillet is ideal. Rinse the meat, pat it dry with paper towels, and cut it into small cubes.
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Step 2:
Peel the onion and cut it into small dice or thin slivers. I'm using red onion here, but white works just as well.
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Step 3:
Heat the vegetable oil in a skillet. Add the onion and cook, stirring, until lightly golden.
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Step 4:
Add the diced turkey to the onion in the pan. Cook, turning with a spatula, for about 10 minutes so it browns on all sides. You're just after a light sear, not a deep crust.
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Step 5:
Stir in the sour cream, then pour in the water. If the sour cream is thick and rich, add a splash more water. Season with salt and ground black pepper to taste — add any other seasonings you like. Lower the heat, cover, and simmer the turkey and onion for about 15–20 minutes. Adjust to how your stove runs.
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Step 6:
Uncover the pan, stir the turkey into the sauce, raise the heat to medium, and cook another 5–7 minutes. The sour cream sauce should thicken. Once it does, turn off the heat and let the dish rest, covered, for about 15 minutes.
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Step 7:
Serve the turkey in sour cream sauce on its own with bread and fresh vegetables, or alongside any side you like. It's great with rice, buckwheat, pasta, mashed potatoes, or braised vegetables. Enjoy!
- Turkey is a lean, hypoallergenic, nutritious meat — good enough that it's often recommended for expecting and nursing moms and for kids. Of course, how you cook any food matters. Here the dish stays about as wholesome as it gets, thanks to both the turkey and the method — braising in sour cream. And it's so simple that even a beginner cook can pull it off.
- To keep the sour cream from curdling or separating as it simmers, stir it together with a spoonful of flour in a separate bowl first, then add it to the pan. You can swap the sour cream for cream of any fat percentage — just remember that the richer the sour cream or cream, the higher the calorie count.
- You can trade the turkey for chicken or any other meat you like. Just keep in mind the cooking time and calorie count will shift accordingly.
- Fry with an oil that has a high smoke point. Every oil is only good up to a certain temperature — its smoke point, past which it starts to burn and form harmful compounds. Refined oils hold up better to heat and have higher smoke points, so they're the safe choice for the stovetop, oven, or grill. The most common high-smoke-point picks are refined sunflower, olive, and grapeseed oil.
Caloric content of the products possible in the composition of the dish
- Sour cream of 30% fat content - 340 kcal/100g
- Sour cream of 25% fat content - 284 kcal/100g
- Sour cream with 20% fat content - 210 kcal/100g
- Sour cream of 10% fat content - 115 kcal/100g
- Sour cream - 210 kcal/100g
- Turkey carcass without skin - 161 kcal/100g
- Turkey of the II category - 194 kcal/100g
- Ground black pepper - 255 kcal/100g
- Vegetable oil - 873 kcal/100g
- Salt - 0 kcal/100g
- Water - 0 kcal/100g
- Onion - 41 kcal/100g
