How many calories in turkey? Breast, leg, skin on and off, per slice

Turkey is the one thing on the Christmas table people assume is safe. For once, that assumption holds up.

Roast turkey breast without the skin is about 150 kcal per 100g, with 30g of protein. That is a touch leaner than chicken. The number moves with the skin, the cut, and whether you weighed it raw or cooked, and those three things are where most turkey logging goes wrong.

The quick answer

Roast, cooked weight, consistent with USDA FoodData Central.

Calories per slice and portion

A hand-carved plate rarely means one thing. Three thick slices of breast and a bit of leg with the skin on is around 170g and 285 kcal.

Skin matters more than the colour of the meat

Most people pick white meat to save calories, and then keep the skin. That is backwards.

So if you prefer the leg, eat the leg and leave the skin. It beats breast with the skin on, and the protein is almost the same. The NHS advice on meat points the same way, recommending turkey and chicken without the skin because poultry skin is much higher in fat than the meat.

Fat is the other reason to keep the distinction in mind. Skinless breast is about 2g of fat per 100g against about 10g for dark meat with the skin on. Dark meat is not a bad choice. It is just a separate log entry.

Raw against cooked

Turkey loses water in the oven, so it gets denser. No calories disappear, they just sit in less weight. Skinless breast is about 115 kcal per 100g raw and 150 cooked, which means 100g raw becomes about 77g cooked.

The usual mistake is weighing cooked meat and logging it against a raw entry. A 150g cooked portion logged as raw comes out at 173 kcal when the real figure is 225. That is 52 kcal missing from every portion. The chicken breast breakdown covers the same trap.

Turkey against the other meats

Turkey wins, narrowly. Over 150g it beats chicken by 23 kcal, which is about a tablespoon of cranberry sauce. Turkey is a lean meat and so is chicken, and neither gives you a reason to change your shopping list. A 150g portion delivers about 45g of protein, which is a large part of what most people need in a day.

Turkey on the Christmas plate

The roast dinner breakdown puts a full Christmas dinner at about 1,017 kcal, with 150g of skinless turkey breast at 225 of that.

That makes the turkey about 22% of the plate, the same as four roast potatoes (229 kcal). It is also the only thing on the plate doing much for protein. Changing the turkey does little, while the pigs in blankets, stuffing and potatoes are where the rest of the calories sit.

Butter, bacon and basting

A butter-basted bird looks like a calorie disaster and mostly is not. If 50g of butter goes on a whole turkey, that is 360 kcal across eight to ten portions, or about 36 to 45 kcal each, and much of it runs into the tin. It matters if you then pour the tin juices over everything. The butter that stays on the skin is another reason to take the skin off.

Mince, slices and other turkey products

Fat content decides most of these. Figures are typical, so check the pack.

The mince row is the one to check. As the ground beef breakdown shows, standard 15% turkey mince is heavier than 5% beef mince at 137. "Turkey" on a pack does not make it lean. The fat percentage does.

Sliced turkey is a good low-calorie filling and it comes with salt. Packet slices often run around 1.5 to 2.5g of salt per 100g, so a 40g filling can be 0.6 to 1g against the NHS limit of 6g a day. Roast turkey you carve yourself has far less. Cured or preserved slices also count as processed meat, unlike a home roast.

Leftovers

The turkey is rarely the expensive part of a Boxing Day sandwich. The sandwich breakdown shows how the extras stack up.

The turkey is 90 kcal of that 530. For something lighter that keeps the protein, a turkey and avocado wrap delivers 35g of protein for 480 kcal with no cooking.

UK and US words that trip up logging

• Turkey crown. A UK term for the breast on the bone with the legs removed. The US calls it a bone-in turkey breast. Log it as breast, with or without the skin.
• Turkey joint or roll. Boneless rolled meat, often breast and thigh combined, and sometimes wrapped in bacon. Use the mixed figures plus anything wrapped around it.
• Mince. Ground turkey in the US. UK packs give the fat percentage, US packs usually give a lean ratio such as 93/7.
• Rasher. A slice of turkey bacon.
• Escalope. A thin, flattened steak, usually breaded in the UK. It is close to a US cutlet.
• Stuffing and dressing. Stuffing is the general UK word, whether it is cooked in the bird or baked as balls. In parts of the US, "dressing" means the mix baked outside the bird. Recipes vary, so log by weight.
• Thanksgiving and Christmas. The per-100g figures above work for both. It is the sides that differ.

Turkey mistakes to avoid

Logging "turkey" and picking the first entry

Entries cover everything from deli slices at 105 kcal per 100g to skin-on leg at 210. Pick the cut and say whether the skin is on.

Weighing it cooked and logging it raw

That is 52 kcal short on a 150g portion, every time.

Keeping the skin and choosing white meat

Skin-on breast is heavier than skinless dark meat. If you want to save calories, remove the skin first.

Assuming turkey mince is the lean option

Only the percentage on the pack tells you. Standard 15% turkey mince is heavier than most lean beef.

Three simple plates

The Christmas plate, turkey first (225 kcal)

• 150g skinless breast (225 kcal)

About 45g of protein on its own. Build the rest of the plate around it.

Leg lover's swap (263 kcal)

• 150g skinless dark meat (263 kcal)

Adds up to: 263 kcal, 45 less than the same portion with the skin, and 22 less than skin-on breast.

The lighter leftover sandwich (263 kcal)

• 2 medium white slices (150 kcal)
• 60g roast breast (90 kcal)
• 1 tbsp cranberry sauce (23 kcal)

Adds up to: 263 kcal, about half of the fully loaded version, and the cranberry does the job the mayonnaise was doing.

The verdict

Roast turkey breast is about 150 kcal per 100g without the skin and 190 with it, and it carries 30g of protein. Dark meat is only 25 kcal heavier, so the skin matters more than the colour. Raw breast is about 115, because cooking removes water.

Turkey is a lean food that lives on a plate full of things that are not. At Christmas it is 22% of the dinner, and most of the calories are elsewhere.

If you change one thing, leave the skin and eat whichever meat you like best.

Pairs well with: the roast dinner calorie breakdown, the chicken breast calorie breakdown, and the sandwich calorie breakdown.