Greek Lemon Chicken Soup

Click Here For The Recipe

     A co-worker brought in this soup from Steak & Sundae in Syracuse for me to try and I really enjoyed it. So I decided to see if I could find a recipe for it so I could try it at home. Avegolemono is the greek name for this soup. If you type that into any search engine you'll find a slew of recipes to try. Allrecipes had a few and this one had a favorable amount of reviews.

     I started out by sauteing the onion with two cloves of garlic on a low heat until the onions were soft. Next I added the lemon juice, celery, white pepper, and 48oz of broth, which is only 6 cups of broth opposed to the 8 cups the recipe called for. This made for a thicker consistency almost like a chowder. If you like your soup to have more of a liquid broth just add the extra two cups. I ommited the carrots and used two chicken boullion cubes instead of the soup base because that's what I had on hand. Instead of using precooked chicken, I cut up two chicken breasts into thin slices and added them to the pot so the juices from the chicken would blend into the soup. I brought this all to a boil all while stirring occasionally. Once it began to boil I decided to add 1 cup of uncooked jasmine rice per other users suggestions. I allowed this to simmer for about 15 to 20 minutes before adding the roux(butter and flour). Once I added the roux the soup really started to thicken up, so this is another time where you could make the soup thinner by using less. Again I let it simmer but only for about 10 minutes this time. While the soup simmered and its aroma began to fill the kitchen, I started on the egg yolks. Once I whisked the yolks, I slowly stirred them into the pot a little at a time. I gave them time to cook through and spooned a quick taste or two just to make sure the rice had cooked. I was impressed but what would Christine's reaction be? This is how the conversation went:

Christine: "Is this the lemon soup you were going to make?"

Me: "Yeah, why?"

Christine: "Oh because it looked like it was going to be bland since there isn't much color to it but the lemon gives it that zing and it goes well with the celery. Is it my favorite soup in the world? No, but..."

Me: "You'd eat it if I made it again."

Christine: "Right."

Rating: Yummy - I'll definately be making this again.