Thursday, January 22, 2009

Jan 22: Egg Lemon Soup (Avgolemono)

After poaching the chicken for the mole and the rest of the bones, I made a chicken stock. Also, with a half lemon from last night, I wanted to try making an Egg Lemon Soup, which is a classic Greek soup, Avgolemono.

Another plus is the few ingredients needed to make the soup.

For today, I made a small batch to try it out.

Egg Lemon Soup
2 C Chicken Broth
1 egg white, whipped to stiff peaks
1 egg yolk
1/2 Lemon, juiced
1/2 C Rice, I had cooked brown rice


1. Bring the stock to a boil... turn off the heat.

2. Beat the egg yolk and combine with the egg white.

3. When the stock is ready, mix the lemon juice into the egg mixture.

4. Temper the egg mixture, by slowly adding about 1 Cup of hot stock while mixing the egg mixture.

Tempering the egg.


Pour the egg into the hot stock, turn heat to medium. Generally, the instructions are to heat the soup without boiling or simmering, to prevent curdling, until thick.
NOTE: Being a geek, I placed a thermometer into the soup and cooked to 170F. Why 170F? Supposedly, temperatures above 160F will destroy any bad bacteria lurking in the egg. The extra 10 F is to account for any inaccuracies in the thermometer.


The finished soup garnished with a little green onion.


A nice chicken soup with a tart lemon finish. The soup wasn't as thick as I hoped, but still had a nice velvety consistency.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I just love Avgolemono yours looks great. Sounds like you found that balance between the eggs and lemon that is the secret to this recipe.