ABOUT THIS RECIPE:
Soupa Avgolemono is one of my all time favourite Greek dishes. Most people only think about eating chicken soup when they are sick with the flu, but not me. I would gladly eat this soup any day of the week, Summer or Winter. When I was little, my Giagia used to make this all the time, as she knew it was my absolute favourite. This is a fairly simple dish to make, the hardest part is making the avgolemono sauce, but other than that there isn’t much too it. Here is my take on how to make Greek Chicken Soup. I made this soup using a pressure cooker, so cooking time was faster. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, you can use a regular pot.
Soupa Avgolemono
Soupa Avgolemono is a Greek Chicken Soup. This dish is perfect to eat of a cold Winter's day. Follow this recipe to make this Greek classic at home.
Servings 6
Ingredients
Chicken Broth
- 1 whole chicken
- 1 red onion large
- 2 stalks celery
- 5 carrots large
- 1/2 tbsp pepper corns
- 1/2 tbsp salt
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 1/2 ltr water
Avgolemono Sauce
- 4 eggs
- 1 large lemon juice
- chicken broth strained
- 1 cup rice medium grain
Instructions
- In a large pot, add all the Chicken broth ingredients. Cover with the lid and cook on a high heat. Cook for roughly two hours. If you see the liquid has gone down too much, add more water.
- After roughly 1 hour, your carrots should be nice and soft, remove and set aside on a plate. Season with salt and pepper.
- After two hours, remove the Chicken from the pot. By now, the chicken should be falling off the bone. Remove chicken and set aside to cool. You will then strip the chicken from the bones once it has cooled.
- Once you have removed the chicken, strain your broth. Use a sieve to remove all the impurities and chunks from the broth. You should be left with a beautiful chicken stock.
- Bring your stock back to the boil and add your rice. Cook for roughly 15 minutes. While the rice is cooking, remove the bones from the chicken and strip into bite size pieces. Season with salt and pepper.
- Once the rice is nearly cooked, remove the pot from the heat.
- In a large mixing bowl, crack the eggs and whisk together. Add in the lemon juice. While whisking, start adding the chicken broth slowly. Make sure you continuously whisk the avgolemono sauce, so it does not curdle the eggs.
- Once the broth has been added. Mix for roughly 1 minute and then pour the avgolemono sauce back into the pot. Cook on a medium - low heat for roughly 5 minutes, until the avgolemono has come to temperature. (you don't want to boil it)
- Serve soup immediately, you can either leave the chicken and carrots as a side or add it to the soup.
- Enjoy!
Notes
You don't have to use a full chicken, you can just use chicken drumsticks or other pieces of the chicken. You can substitute a full chicken with 6-10 chicken drumsticks.
You can also make this soup in a pressure cooker to halve the time you need to cook your broth. If cooking with a pressure cooker, cook time will be roughly 1 hour.
You can use a ladle to add the stock to the avgolemono or if you are confident or have an extra set of hands, simply pour stock from the pot directly into the mixing bowl.
Making the chicken broth for the perfect soupa avgolemono
Once the Chicken starts to fall off the bones, strain the stock.
Once the broth has been strained, add the rice and continue cooking.
Making the avgolemono sauce
Strip the chicken and remove the carrots, season with salt and pepper
Let the avgolemono sit on a medium heat for roughly 5 mins.
The final step of this recipe is making the avgolemono, avgolemono is fairly easy to make if you use an electric mixer, in the old days, they had to mix it by hand. Simply crack and beat the eggs in a large bowl and mix, once mixed, add in the lemon juice and slowly pour the chicken broth. Viola, you have the perfect avgolemono. Pour avgolemono sauce back into your pot and let it sit for 5 minutes on a medium heat, you don’t want to cook the sauce, just let it heat up.
Serve your Greek Chicken Soup with the boiled chicken and the boiled carrots. I like to leave these as a side, but you could also shred the chicken and chop the carrots into small pieces and add it to the soup. I like adding a heap of freshly ground pepper on my soup.
- Laxanodolmades – Cabbage Meatballs with Avgolemono
- Giouvarelakia – Greek Meatballs with Avgolemono
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