Avgolemono Soup
CATEGORIES
INGREDIENTS
  • Servings: 6
  • 8 cups homemade chicken stock or good quality store-bought stock
  • 1 cup rice (I prefer short grain because it's starchier and will help to thicken the soup but if you don't want the rice to be as soft or the soup to be as thick, use long grain)
  • 1 cup cooked, shredded chicken (optional)
  • 3 eggs
  • 3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (more or less, depending on how tart you want the soup)
  • salt and pepper
DIRECTIONS
  1. In a stockpot or dutch oven, bring the stock to a low boil and add the rice.
  2. Simmer until the rice is cooked, and then stir in the chicken just to heat through.
  3. Season to taste.
  4. Take the dutch oven off the heat.
  5. In a medium bowl, beat the eggs together with the lemon juice.
  6. Slowly drizzle some of the broth from the soup into the egg-lemon mixture, whisking constantly so as not to scramble the egg.
  7. Do about 2 ladles full of broth.
  8. Then, slowly pour the whole mixture back into the stockpot, again whisking constantly.
RECIPE BACKSTORY
Avgolemono is probably the easiest soup in the world to make; not that it tastes that way. The thing is, because it has so few ingredients (4, if you're not adding chicken), you really want to use homemade stock for this soup to make sure it has good flavor. I suppose you could use a good quality store bought stock, but I'm going to be a little Ina Garten here and strongly suggest homemade stock. Also in my blog: http://ellysaysopa.vox.com