Rice, egg and lemon soup…The Cypriot cure-all soup

I was searching through my blog and could not believe that I’ve not shared the recipe for the most famous Greek Cypriot soup of all, the one we were all brought up with, the one that cures all……the one that my family will definitely want to know the recipe for one day…….

Soupa Avgolemoni (Rice, egg and lemon soup)

While Mr. Greeklish hasn’t been able to work and I’ve been covering his shifts, who was going to cook? So, I wrote the recipe down step-by-step and can you believe it? HIS soup was voted better than mine by him AND my son and daughter…..

*Harumphhhh. Walks off in an almighty strop*

How you begin depends on whether you want boiled chicken to accompany the soup, we generally cut the chicken into bite-size pieces and add it to the soup, it’s really delicious like that!

If you do, cover your chosen chicken pieces (1 per person should be ample) with cold water, add a generous amount of salt, bring to the boil, skim off the scum and simmer for approximately 40-45 mins, so that the chicken is perfectly cooked. I always add a stock cube to mine.

If you don’t want chicken (or you don’t eat meat) you can use just stock cubes – chicken or vegetable, in approx 2 litres of water.

Anyway, once the chicken is cooked, remove from the stock and simmer 1 heaped cup of washed long-grain rice in the stock, for about 10 minutes, so it’s just cooked.

Turn off the heat.

In a separate bowl, beat together 3 eggs with the juice of 2 lemons. (If you like things very lemony, like we do, you may need three! But start with two as you can always add more later.

Now, very slowly, trickle ladlefuls of the stock, in to the egg and lemon mixture (what you’re trying to do is to slowly increase the temperature of the eggs before adding them back to the stock so that you don’t end up with scrambled eggs!) while continually stirring.

When you have added about half of the stock to the egg-lemon mix, slowly pour back into the rice-stock mix.

Your soup is now ready to eat!

We like ours thick and creamy, but you can always add more water if you think it’s toooo thick.

Also bear in mind that it will thicken as it stands.

Ground black pepper goes really well atop your lovely soup.

16 comments on “Rice, egg and lemon soup…The Cypriot cure-all soup”

OH, I'll have to try this one Anna. It looks great.

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This recipe sounds very interesting. It starts off like a Chinese/Vietnamese congee where we boil chicken in some water and then add rice. But where we then flavour it with an array of Asian ingredients, you thicken yours with egg and lemon. I would be really curious to try this!

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Anna look amazing! love this1 gloria

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Isn't it great how every cuisine has that wonderful, comforting and soothing soup dish? This is one of my favourite soups 🙂

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Hi Anna,this happens to be my younger son's all-favourite soup!It looks really thick and creamy,just the way he likes it!Colder weather is approaching,so this soup is a definite MUST!!XOXO

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