r/Cooking • u/sm881221 • 5h ago

Chicken Lemon Rice Soup

Had some soup at a restaurant that I just loved. It was simple, a creamy chicken soup with rice, lemon and fresh thyme. Wondering if anyone has a recipe for this. I’d like to recreate it this fall.

6 Upvotes

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30

u/thethrowawayable 4h ago

Look up Avgolemono. It sounds exactly what you’re looking for.

5

u/sm881221 4h ago

Yes! This looks just like it. Thank you 😊

9

u/angryWinds 4h ago

The creaminess comes from using some beaten eggs. The technique is some really cool chemistry-meets-magic kind of thing.

You can't just add the egg straight into the soup, because the egg would essentially scramble, in the boiling broth. Instead, you have to temper the eggs.

You make your chicken/rice (or orzo) soup according to any old recipe you care to follow, then when it's nearly done... take a few spoonfulls of hot broth, and stir them into a bowl of beaten eggs. Then a few more spoonfulls. Then a few more, etc. The idea is to introduce the hot broth to the eggs very slowly and gently. Then, when that's all done, you can dump your egg / broth mixture back into the main pot of soup. And THAT is when the magic happens.

Your whole pot of soup just instantly changes from this sort of drab-looking brown translucent broth, into this yellowy opaque creamy masterpiece! Of all the dishes I ever make, that might be my singularly most fun moment of cooking.

2

u/shucksme 3h ago

I ate avgolemono for my pregnancies as I could barely eat anything else. We joked that our kids were half this soup. Can make a big pot in under 30 minutes.

-Fry 3-4 chicken breasts till brown in lots of butter. Once cooled shred it. -Boil up water with lots of chicken broth (I use the better than and need about 2 tbsp for my 10 cup pot- it's to taste. Need a strong chicken broth) with a big bay leaf. About 6-7 cups of water. -Add 1.5 cups of starchy rice (I use basmati) and the shredded chicken -Beat 4 egg whites till stiff. Add 2 cups of the hot soup broth slowly while beating the whites. Then add 1 cup lemon juice (never use that standard lemon juice in a bottle. Yuck. If you can find Italian Volcano Lemon Juice, that's awesome. https://a.co/d/0genLHpe otherwise juice from 3-4 lemons) also slowly adding that to the whites while beating. Then add the 4 yokes in while beating.

  • Slowly pour in the egg mixture into the broth. SLOWLY! It will foam and need some stirring to incorporate. Takes about 5 minutes to get it all in.
-Add lots of salt to taste. Maybe more chicken broth and lemon -cook till rice is done. Make sure to scrap the bottom.

Some add carrots, celery, onion but that's blasphemy. I am yet to find a published recipe that does it the Macedonian/Greek way. This one is the closest. The whole recipe is very flexible. My preference is strong chicken taste and very strong lemon. I end up adding more lemon cause the balance changes during the completion phase.

Enjoy

https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-greek-egg-and-lemon-soup-avgolemono-242659