This classic Greek soup - avgolemono - is simple, easy, and amazingly flavorful. Egg thickens a soup of rice or orzo cooked in broth and flavored with lemon. Add some crusty bread and a green salad and you have the easiest, warming-est, loveliest dinner ever.
Use 1 egg for a thinner soup and 2 eggs for a thicker soup.
Like all soups, this one benefits from the use of Homemade Broth, but any good quality broth works just fine. If using canned or boxed broth, consider watering it down - use 5 cups broth and 1 cup water - to mitigate its saltiness.
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes
Ingredients:
- 6 cups chicken or vegetable broth
- 1 cup rice or orzo
- 1 or 2 eggs
- 1 to 2 Tbsp. lemon juice
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preparation:
- Bring the broth to a boil. Add the rice or orzo, reduce heat to maintain a steady simmer, and cook until the rice or pasta is tender.
- Meanwhile, whisk the egg(s) thoroughly. You want to really break them up - when you lift the whisk out of the bowl the egg should fall off evenly and seem almost as thin as water, with no globs or thickness to them.
- When the rice or orzo is tender, ladle out about 1 cup of broth into a measuring cup or small pitcher. Whisk 1 Tbsp. of the lemon juice into the egg and then slowly pour the hot broth into the egg mixture while whisking the mixture constantly. This action will cook the egg but keep it from curdling.
- Whisk the hot egg mixture into the soup. Taste and add more lemon juice, if needed, and salt to taste. Garnish with pepper, if you like.
