Greek Chicken Soup

Anybody got more chicken to use up?? Make soup! Homemade soup! Specifically, make Avgolemono. Since I don't know how to say that word, just call it Greek Chicken Soup! This soup is creamy, and chickeny, and ricey, and lemony. In a word, it's just delightful! And like a lot of these other recipes, a great way to use up ingredients from other meal (GO meal plan!). Here's all you need:



about a cup of cooked chicken (this was leftover fried chicken)

4 cups of chicken broth

1/4 to 1/2 cup of lemon juice (start with a quarter, then taste it...make it as lemony as you want!)
1/4 cup celery, diced
1/4 cup carrots sliced or diced or shredded (**see disclaimer)
4 egg yolks, lightly beaten
2 tbsp butter, softened
2 tbsp flour
1 cup of cooked rice (see all the reasons to make a little too much rice! Makes me giddy!)

**disclaimer. I do not eat orange food (this excludes cheddar, for obvious reasons). The only way I will eat a carrot is if it's in soup and tastes more like chicken than carrot. And the reason I put the larger piece of carrot in this is so it can't sneak up on me. Carry on...**

Bring the chicken broth to a slight boil in a large pot on medium high. Chicken broth gets nutty on high (and not as in "takes on a nutlike flavor or consistency"...it goes all over the place!). Add in your vegetables. Turn the heat down to medium, and let that simmer for at least 20 minutes:


I let it go longer, so the carrots can taste like chicken!

Meanwhile mash the butter and flour into a paste, like this:


Then stir that paste into the broth.

Now is when this soup gets good. Temper the egg yolks:



Just take a small bit of broth out of the pot and slowly pour into the egg yolks while stirring. (Very hard to take a picture of, by the way!). If you just dump them in, you'll have scrambled egg yolks instead of a creamy soup...

Next throw in the lemon juice, the chicken, and the rice:

Let all this warm up (but turn the heat down to lowish...again, don't mess with an egg yolk...)

That's it!



Serve it in your favorite jadeite bowl...the great thing about vintage dishes is that you are getting a true serving size. Not a modern day America Super Sized serving. My "modern" soup bowls are the same size as my 2 cup mixing bowl. Insanity. Portion control, people. Eat real milk, real sugar, real butter, real food! But not out of mixing bowls!

**Another disclaimer: This portion control trick does not work with coffee cups! I would much rather slurp my coffee up in a "modern" trough-like mug than my dainty lady-like 6 oz jadeite cups. A girl needs her caffeine...don't hold out. And don't serve coffee in a 6 oz cup until after 11am, at least!**

That wraps up Chicken Session #1. Enjoy!