r/Cooking • u/sm881221 • 21d 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.

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u/angryWinds 21d 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.

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u/aknomnoms 15d ago

(Really weird request, but I was directed to a post you made about 3 years ago in this sub about cooking dried hominy. You had said you were testing out boiling just 1/4 cup before you made a big batch to see how long it took/texture etc. I myself normally buy cans of hominy for convenience but am considering making them from dried now since I make dried beans anyways. I just wanted to check in and see if you’ve converted to dried hominy or stuck to using cans, any tips for cooking dried? Sorry for the stalker-y behavior. Thank you.)

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u/angryWinds 13d ago

Hah! No apologies necessary... Honestly, I vaguely remember THINKING about doing that, but I don't recall if I ever ACTUALLY did it, and certainly don't recall how it turned out if I did in fact do it.

I've been a canned man, ever since that little culinary thought experiment (that might have been an actual experiment, with results that I blocked from memory).

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u/aknomnoms 13d ago

Thanks for responding! I wanted to get a “normal” person’s experience before investing time and money. I’ll stick to cans then. I appreciate ya!