Chicken soup

Today, we are having chicken soup for dinner. You can’t beat chicken soup. Everybody’s favorite!  “Delicious and nutritious” as my kids say. 🙂 I’m offering you the Greek version with the egg and lemon `sauce’ added at the end. I’ve known how to make chicken soup since I was a teenager because my mum would have me help her beat the egg whites.  So, I can’t really give good credits for this recipe. Chrysa Paradisi’s cook book most likely has something similar.

Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken
• 1 onion
• 2 celery stems
• salt, pepper, optionally dill
• half cup rice (or more if you like it less watery)
• 2 eggs
• 1 lemon

How to make: Fill 3/4  of a large pot with water. Rinse chicken well and put it in the pot.  Peel the onion and add it in the water.  I add the whole onion and remove it when the chicken is done. Add celery sticks cut in small pieces. If you don’t have them, it’s OK but they do add to the taste. Add salt and pepper. Bring water to boil and cook for about 1 hour or until chicken is done. Remove chicken (and whole onion) and add the rice (I rinse it first) and cook for another 15 minutes (depending on the rice).  Remove the bones and skin  from the chicken and cut the meaty parts in smallish cube shaped bites (approximately, don’t go crazy).  You can add the chicken 5 minutes before the rice is done. It’s also OK to add after the rice is done.

Now for the egg sauce. If you are Greek, you probably know the slow way for making it which involves beating the egg whites first. Well, I’m offering you the quick way. Beat two eggs well, white and yolks together, in your mini-food processor. Add the juice of a lemon and a tablespoon of water and beat again.  Put the mix in a large bowl.  Using a big soup ladle, give your soup a stir to cool it off a bit by letting the hot steam get out. While beating the eggs with a fork or a whisk, ladle soup in your egg mix until the bowl  is filled up. Then pour the content of the bowl in the soup pot, stirring gently with your spoon.  Your soup should get a nice yellow color.

Notes and tips: If  you prefer you can add the onion chopped and let it blend with the soup. I just don’t like the look of it in my soup and once the flavor is out, it doesn’t really add much to stay in the soup.  If you want your soup to look like ‘mageiritsa’ –traditional Greek Easter soup–  when you put the salt, pepper and celery add chopped dill. I love it!   I don’t do this anymore because my kids don’t like “the green things” swimming in the soup… When you take the chicken out of the pot for deboning, it’ll be really hot. It’s easier to wait for it to  cool off a bit. This is a good dish to make  while your kid is doing homework on the kitchen table.  For the egg sauce, you should make sure you stir the soup so the steam gets out and it’s not too hot to cook the egg. But don’t wait for more than 5 minutes or so.  If it’s too cool the egg mix doesn’t combine well to give you the nice yellow, thick look.