Greek Lemon Chicken Soup

Aveolemono is a geek twist on a classic chicken soup!

It adds a little lemon and eggs at the very end to lightly thicken the soup.

Ingredients

Stock

1 whole chicken Broken down and skin removed .

2 carrots chopped into large chunks

2 celery sticks chopped into large chunks

1 onion cut into quarters

3 bay levels

2 liters of water

The soup

Chicken from stock

2 carrots cut into small cubes

2 stalks of celery diced into cubes

1 small Onion diced

Salt pepper to taste

2 eggs

¼ cup lemon juice

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First we are going to roughly chop the carrots, onion, and celery into medium chunks and add those to the pot.

Now to the chicken. We’ll remove the skin since we don’t want all the extra fat to be in the soup and it’s easier to remove it now than later. My chicken was previously broken up and it fell apart into 2 pieces. Once we have the skin off, we’ll put it in the pot. Add 2 liters of cold water or just enough to cover the chicken. Add some bay leaves. We are going to place this on the burner on high until it comes to a boil. Once there, reduce and bring to a simmer for one hour. You’ll have some foamy stuff, called scum, yes, I know, yummy name. That’ll float to the top. Just go ahead and scrape that off.

While our stock is cooking, we are going to go ahead and dice up our other ingredients, celery, carrot, and onion.

It:s been roughly an hour so let’s take our stock off the heat. Remove all the veggies and chicken.

Don’t forget to remove your bay leaf.

We need to strip the chicken bones of all its meat. Let it cool before you do this. I did not and burned my hand. Discard your bones and veggies; they served their purpose. Now add the celery, carrots, and onion to the pot and let it cook for 20 minutes. While that’s cooking, let’s cut up the chicken to bite size pieces.

Be careful of small bones and make sure you remove them.

The soup has been on for 10 minutes. We are going to add ½ cup whole wheat orzo to the pot and allow that to cook.

Just before the orzo is cooked we are going to add the chicken back in to heat it up as it is already cooked.

Let’s get the liaison started (our lemon juice and eggs); this is going to slightly thicken the soup and give it a creamy texture. Start by whisking 2 eggs (you can use 3 egg yolks as well) and 2 freshly squeezed lemon juice together. This is going to be the tricky part as we need to slowly add the chicken stock to the egg mixture to allow the eggs to temper and not curdle. Constantly whisking the eggs add 1 ladle of stock to the mixture until half the liquid from the stock is incorporated into the eggs. Then go ahead and add this into the pot of soup. Still stirring.

I am going to chop up some fresh dill and add this to the soup. You don’t have to do this. I just like the freshness it adds.

We have not seasoned our soup yet so lets go ahead and season with salt and pepper .

You can store this in the fridge. Just be careful to not bring it to a boil when reheating or it may curdle. Try to not go higher than 180 F.