My mother-in-law is Cypriot, and a great cook, so today I thought I would feature a soup she makes: Avgolemono Soup which is a Greek Chicken-Lemon Soup from scratch. This is the perfect soup to make when you’re sick or on a cold day.

avgolemono-ingredients

Ingredients

1 whole raw chicken

3 carrots

3 stalks of celery

1 onion (missing from the picture above because we usually don’t work off recipes or lay out all of our ingredients beforehand so we tend to forget ingredients until they are needed )

salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Lemon juice from 3 lemons

5 eggs

1 or 2 cups of rice (depending how thick you want it) Usually the recipe calls for white rice but it can be substituted. Today we used basmati rice.

Directions

  1. Rinse the chicken and remove any organs that may be inside; then trim the skin on the chicken. step-1
  2. Put the chicken in a large pot and fill it up until there is about an inch of water covering the chicken. You can add the chicken organs if you want to add extra flavour and then remove them when the broth is done. If they look fresh we add them.
  3. Add salt and pepper, cover and let boil. Once it starts to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 40 minutes.
  4. Remove the foam (fat) from the top of the water and add the vegetables to the broth. Simmer for another 20 minutes.foam-removal
  5. When the chicken is done, the meat should fall from the bones easily. Remove the chicken and vegetables. If you wish, use a wire strainer to strain the broth from the pot into a new pot to remove any excess chunks from the broth.
    soup-separationsoup-drainage
  6. Add the rice and cook according to the package – this can vary from 20 to 40 minutes depending on the type of rice you use.
  7. When the rice is almost done, lightly beat the eggs together in a large bowl using a fork or a whisk, then add the lemon juice to them.
  8. Once the rice is cooked turn the temperature to low, or if you have a stove where the burners take a while to cool down, you can just turn off the burner. If you mess up the soup, this is the step where it will happen:  Stir one soup ladle full of hot broth into the eggs slowly so the eggs do not curdle. Gradually stir in more broth until the egg mixture is heated. Then pour the egg mixture back into the pot, stirring briskly. The result should be a creamy, cloudy looking soup. You may season with additional salt, pepper or lemon juice at this point.mixing
  9. Season with parsley and if you want, add pieces of chicken to the soup before serving or serve soup with bread.
  10. Enjoy!

soup-done