Avgolemono

Greek Lemon Chicken Soup

This soup, a loaf of crusty bread to dip in good olive oil, and a bowl of greens is a perennially satisfying dinner.

Ingredients:

• 48 oz low sodium chicken broth
• 3 eggs separated
• one small onion, chopped
• 1/2 lemons
• 2 squares chicken boullioun
• lemon-pepper to taste
• meat from a roasted chicken, or two large chicken breasts
• 2 cups cooked rice or pasta

If using a previously roasted chicken, remove bone and skin from the chicken and set aside meat. If using skinless boneless chicken breasts, spray with olive oil and cook in a 375 degree oven for 30 minutes, turning once.

Saute chopped onions in olive oil for two minutes in a soup pot. Add broth and juice and zest from lemons, and bouillon cubes. Bring to a rolling boil then shut off and move from the burner. Scoop out one cup of broth and set aside to cool.

This is where you want to take a break in the action and really let everything cool down, not cold, but to warm. Do some dishes, make a bed, whatever….

Beat egg whites until fluffy, then add yolks slowly. Dribble in cooled broth. Add egg mixture back into the soup pot. Do not boil!! The mixture will break (still tastes great even if this happens…).

Add in chopped chicken and cooked rice. Serve immediately!

Serves 6.

From the Archives

Just Like Yia-Yia’s

Every wife has a recipe and a reason for fixing her husband’s favorite dish, the one his mom used to make. 

When I married my husband, my mother-in-law, Tess Cambo, also known as Yia-Yia, quickly made me aware of her son’s favorite dish: Avgolemono, a frothy Greek soup of eggs, lemon, and chicken. The family recipe had been handed down from Tess’s mother, Polyxenia Theodorcopoulos, who grew up in Greece. I clearly needed to master it if I wanted to have a happy marriage and be accepted into the fold. No pressure. Tess gave me a Greek cookbook that included the recipe and declared that she was available for consultation.

Tess makes Avgolemono the traditional way, by roasting or boiling a chicken and making homemade stock. I’m a working girl, so I wanted a way to prepare the sacred meal without causing cruel and unusual culinary punishment to myself on a weeknight. I searched around for other recipes on the sly. Some called for thickening the soup with roux (sacrilege, PJ’s sister, Lisa, informed me) while others called for only egg yolks, no whites. Then there were PJ’s preferences: hunks of chicken, and pasta, versus rice. 

Fast forward: one year later. Our first wedding anniversary. I have made countless versions of the soup. The original computer printout of my basic recipe is mangled and splattered with notes scribbled front and back. Through trial and tribulation, a recipe had emerged, THE recipe, the one that tastes like his mother’s cooking. What’s more, he says he likes it even better, if you can believe it, with its custom ingredients. 

I was smug. Too smug. I was, like my soup, too adaptable. The best way is to roast a whole chicken like Tess does and harvest the meat for the soup. That way you can serve roasted chicken one night and soup the next.

On the night before our anniversary weekend, I dipped my spoon in the soup pot and summoned a taste. I’d nailed it: Rich, lemony, chickeny, eggy. I carefully wrote down my version on a fresh new card. And yes, it being a weekend, I had executed a cooking working girl’s Sunday night trifecta: roast chicken for Sunday supper, soup for Monday night, and a happy husband. 

After the Sunday chicken supper, “Honey,” I declared. “Try the soup. Just a taste. This is the one. I even wrote it down.” “Nope, I’m going to wait for tomorrow night,” he said. 

I should’ve known then.

On Monday at work, I must have thought of that soup three or four times, quite pleased with myself that when I got home all I had to do was cook some pasta and add it to the pot. Voila, dinner. When I got home, my husband had been doing yard work. “I’m starved,” he told me. 

I breezed triumphantly into the house, gym bag in one hand, opened the fridge and grabbed the pot of soup with the other.

The supper of soup slipped from my grasp and suspended itself momentarily on its fall to the floor, then landing, dousing every object within a six foot radius (including me) in a creamy golden liquid. Hunks of chicken stuck out of the refrigerator grate. Every jar of jelly, every condiment hanging on the fridge door was drizzled with yellow ooze. 

Why I didn’t put the gym bag down and use two hands, we’ll never know. Poor upbringing, surely.

I wiggled out of my clothing right there, stripped down to my underwear, and started cleaning up the mess. PJ had to unplug the fridge out of its pocket. As we scooped and mopped and scrubbed our heads were bowed. What a waste.

“Are you sad?” I finally said, many minutes later, pushing the mop across the floor one final time. “Yeah,” he admitted. I headed for the shower to wash Avgolemono from my arms and legs while PJ got on the phone and ordered a sausage pizza. I was sad, too. I loved the soup as much as he did, not because I had finally figured it out but because it was a gift from his family to me and a gift from me to him. Avgolemono is a connection that ties together the generations of our family. And it comes in handy when a little extra comfort is needed between us.