Thicken the Sauce With Sour Cream
I take a rather minimalist approach to making skillet sauces, especially on weekday evenings. I take the meat out of the skillet, pour the excess fat into a mold, and grease the tasty toasted pieces with something alcoholic. (Recently, it was semi-oxidized dry vermouth.) Then I beat the fat again, season the sauce if necessary, and pour it over the toasted chop, steak, or cutlet.
But last night, as I was making another pork tenderloin , I decided I needed something creamier and thicker to spoon over the meat and potatoes. I usually make beurre manie – “raw roux ” or fancy French butter flour paste, but I didn’t feel like taking two more ingredients. I only wanted to deal with one ingredient, and that ingredient was my best sour cream. (You can also use thick, fatty yogurt, but the resulting sauce will taste slightly different. Do not use low-fat or low-fat yogurt unless you want your sauce to suck.)
Sour cream, as you probably know, is a fermented milk product with a high fat and flavor content. Combined with reduced wine and hot drips from the pan, it melts in a creamy, slightly spicy, succulent pan sauce without the need for flour, cornstarch, or any other powdered thickener. Simply prepare the sauce for the skillet as usual – remove the meat, drain off excess fat, remove the frosting, reduce the wine and beat the fat again – then remove from heat and add a couple of tablespoons (or more) sour cream. Taste, season if necessary, and spoon over anything that needs a creamy, flavored gravy.