Lemon Orzo Soup with Chicken

Lemon Orzo Soup with Chicken

April 15, 2016

I’m so happy to be post­ing a new recipe with shots from the lovely Maya Vis­nyei! It’s been way too long. We’ve been hard at work on our cook book for the past few months and that meant we had to take a break from our typ­i­cal photography/recipe pro­duc­tion sched­ule. But we shot the cook book’s cover — actu­ally we shot three ver­sions and don’t know yet our­selves which will make the cut! — two weeks ago. And then on Mon­day we received the best email ever from our edi­tor announc­ing that our man­u­script is com­plete. Of course we’ll still have plenty to do with copy edit­ing and the design process but the really heavy lift­ing is done! It was an amaz­ing (and bizarre and fun and exas­per­at­ing and hilar­i­ous) expe­ri­ence and I wish we could share the results with you all sooner.

But I con­fess it’s nice to get back into the groove and direct those ener­gies back into the site. I spent a day with Maya last week and I know Laura is doing the same thing this week so there’s lots of good stuff com­ing your way. First up: soup! This is prob­a­bly the eas­i­est soup I’ve ever made and although it’s hearty enough to be din­ner, the fresh, lemon-y  flavour keeps it light. I’ve made this soup twice in the last week and I think I ate most of both batches! The kids were a bit skep­ti­cal but both tried it and had about half a bowl which I’m going to call a great suc­cess.  Based loosely on the Greek soup called Avgole­mono, my ver­sion adds chicken to make it more of a meal. The only trick is to be sure you tem­per your eggs before adding them to the broth s0 it becomes creamy not cur­dled. But really, it’s sim­ple pim­ple. I still have half a bag of orzo in the cup­board, I think I may have to make this again.…

pho­tos by Maya Vis­nyei

Print
Lemon Orzo Soup with Chicken

Ingredients

  • 8 cups of low-sodium chicken stock
  • 1 cup orzo
  • 1/2 lb of skin­less, bone­less chicken breast, chopped into bite-sized pieces
  • 3 eggs
  • 1/3 cup of lemon juice
  • salt and pep­per to taste
  • small hand­ful of pars­ley, chopped

Method

In a large pot, bring your stock to a boil. Add the orzo and reduce heat just slightly so sim­mers for 10 minutes.

Now add the chicken to the pot with the stock and orzo and sim­mer for 10 more minutes.

While that's cook­ing away, crack your eggs into a bowl and whisk in the lemon juice. Using a ladle, scoop out some hot broth and add small of stream of hot stock to your egg mix­ture while whisk­ing. Add as much hot stock as it takes to really warm up the egg so it won't scram­ble in the soup.

Now pour your egg mix­ture into your soup pot.

Both the pasta and the egg will thicken up your soup.

Cook for another 2 or 3 min­utes or until it thick­ens slightly

Taste it before adding salt and pepper.  

Serve with a sprin­kle of chopped pars­ley.

If you have left­overs and have this soup again the fol­low­ing day you'll need to thin them out with more stock or water as the orzo will con­tinue to thicken the soup.


 

 

Tags ChickenEasyfastSouporzoLemon Orzo Soup with Chicken
Category SpringSummerLunchBy IngredientSoupsVegetablesAppetizersBy SeasonBy Meal TypePasta

You might also like

Lisa’s Letters Home: Salsa Verde
By Ingredient

Lisa’s Letters Home: Salsa Verde

I’m pretty sure that I was Italian in another life, or there are some Italian genes somewhere in my roots. I love all things Italian, particularly, their amazingly diverse (and

Gluten Free Banana Chocolate Chip Cupcakes & Never Fail Chocolate Icing
By Ingredient

Gluten Free Banana Chocolate Chip Cupcakes & Never Fail Chocolate Icing

Last week I wrote about the ugliness of gluten free baking. I was only half kidding. Things can get pretty ugly, just take a look at my photo below. But

Tuna and Black Bean Wraps
Vegetables

Tuna and Black Bean Wraps

It’s the home stretch, people! There are only 11 weeks of lunch making left in the school year… God, that doesn’t sound so good, does it? Well, there’s more behind