Authentic Greek-Cypriot Avgolemono – Egg Lemon Soup

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Avgolemono is a delicious Greek soup made with chicken stock, rice, lemon, and eggs, and tastes divine! It is so creamy and delicious (not a drop of cream in sight) and is real Greek comfort food! Learn how to make this egg lemon soup in this authentic Greek-Cypriot recipe.

I’ve got more delicious Cypriot Recipes for you to enjoy – right click and open these other recipes in a new tab so that you can read them after this one!

Avgolemono

The full ingredients list and instructions are found in the printable recipe card at the end of this post. I highly recommend reading the blog post all the way through so that you don’t miss any tips or substitution suggestions and to ensure that you have all the ingredients and equipment required as well as understand the steps and timings involved.

There are probably lots of different recipes for avgolemono (pronounced av-gho-lé-mo-no) online, but I make mine (as my grandmother did) with chicken stock, rice, eggs, lemon, salt and a sprinkling of cinnamon on the top.

She would always make chicken stock from scratch by boiling up a chicken in a big soup pot. She might have thrown in an onion or some dried oregano, but most of the time it was just the chicken and some salt.

Not only would you get a delicious broth to start the soup with, but also tender chicken meat to shred and put in the soup. I have memories of eating this soup at her house when I was a kid, and avgolemono is super comfort food for me.

However, when you need that comfort food NOW, you haven’t got an hour or so to be boiling up a chicken! So I created a bit of a shortcut by using good quality ready-made chicken stock. This one change means I have the soup made and ladled into a bowl in about 20 minutes!

Eggs are used to thicken the soup – and give it a velvety creamy taste. They are whisked with lemons and this mixture needs to be tempered (brought to temperature) before being added to the soup so that the eggs don’t end up scrambling in your soup – not a nice texture at all!

This is a great all-year-round soup – it’s comforting and warming in the winter months, but the lemon flavour makes it delicious and refreshing in the spring and summer months.

It is often eaten at Easter, and I’ve got a collection of Easter Recipes you might like to try. Right-click and open them in a new tab to read next.

Make it with your homemade, from-scratch chicken stock and it’s the Greek equivalent to Jewish Penicillin (chicken soup)! It’s the one dish we all would request as children when we were not well!

Ingredients Used In This Recipe

To make avgolemono soup you will need:

• Chicken Stock/Broth – homemade or good quality store-bought
• Rice – I use either long grain or basmati rice – whatever I have in my store cupboard, to be honest!
• Fresh Lemons
• Eggs
• Salt
• Ground Cinnamon– we’ve always topped our rice soup with a sprinkling of cinnamon. You could crack some black pepper over if you like.

Avgolemono Recipe Tips

• The recipe card describes how to make this soup using ready-made stock. If you make your own chicken stock – remove the chicken (and any vegetables) before adding the rice.
• I make my avgolemono with chicken stock, but it can also be made with fish, lamb or vegetable stock
• Do not wash your rice first. The starch from the rice will also help to thicken the soup.
• As a general rule of thumb, I use the juice of one lemon to two eggs. But this will vary on the size of the lemon. I like my avgolemono to be lemony in flavour, so use quite a lot of lemon juice. Like many recipes that have been passed through the generations, there are no hard and fast measurements. It’s taken some trial and error to get the ratio to where we enjoy it the most!
• When the rice is cooked, remove the pan from the heat and leave it for a couple of minutes to cool down a little.
• Start adding the hot stock into the egg and lemon mixture, a ladle at a time, whisking continually so that the eggs don’t set. I generally keep adding stock until I run out of it in the pan. This way I make sure that the eggs really are brought up to temperature. I whisk everything together in a jug. This makes pouring it back into the pan a lot easier.
• Pour the now warm eggs, lemon and stock back into the pan and seasoned with a little salt. If you work quickly there is no need to reheat the soup, but if you do reheat it, make sure you do it gently and stir continually to stop the eggs from setting – like I said earlier, you do not want bits of cooked egg floating in this soup!

I do hope you give this avgolemono a try! It may seem scary to bring the eggs to temperature, but once you have the hang of it, it is so easy to make.

I’ve even got a video (that I made in 2014, so forgive the quality!) demonstrating how to make this wonderful soup!

You’ll find the How To Make Avgolemono video in the recipe card or you can save it to your YouTube Playlists so that it’s always there when you need it – don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube Channel while you are there!

More Soup Recipes

Want more soup recipes? Check these out next:

• Slow Cooker Mushroom Soup
• Spicy Roasted Tomato & Red Pepper Soup
• Cuban Black Bean Soup

How Do I Make Avgolemono?

Just check out the recipe card below with full ingredients, instructions, and demonstration photos. You can print the card out too (don’t worry, the pics don’t print to save your ink!).

Continue to Content

Avgolemono - Egg Lemon Soup

Yield: 4

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

Avgolemono has a lovely lemon flavour and the eggs make it creamy and smooth. It's quite filling, so ideal as a main meal - more so if you add cooked, shredded chicken. It can also be eaten as a starter, which we often do at the Greek Orthodox Easter.

Print

Ingredients

• 1500ml / 6½ cups ready-made chicken stock/broth
• 100g / ½ cups basmati rice
• 4 eggs
• 2 medium lemons, juiced
• salt
• ground cinnamon to serve (optional)

Instructions

1. Bring the chicken stock to boil in a saucepan and then add the unwashed rice. Cook for 10 minutes until the rice is tender.
2. Meanwhile, whisk together the eggs and lemon juice in a jug.
   
   
   
3. Remove the saucepan from the heat and leave to cool for a few minutes.
   
   
   
4. Whisking the eggs and lemon mixture, start adding the hot stock to it a ladle at a time to bring the eggs up to temperature.
5. Continue whisking and adding stock so that the eggs do not set.
6. After adding most of the stock, pour the egg, lemon, and stock mixture back into the saucepan and season with salt.
7. Serve immediately in warmed soup bowls with a sprinkling of cinnamon
   
   

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Nutrition Information:

Yield: 4 Serving Size: 1
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 273Total Fat: 10gSaturated Fat: 3gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 6gCholesterol: 200mgSodium: 861mgCarbohydrates: 26gFiber: 2gSugar: 8gProtein: 19g

This site uses Nutritionix to provide estimated nutrition. Nutritional information is always approximate and will depend on the quality of ingredients used and serving sizes. If you need exact calories and macros, please do your own calculations.

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Make It A Greek-Cypriot Meal!

You’ve made the soup starter, but what about the rest of the courses?

Here are additional recipes to make a full meal!

• Main Dish: Kleftiko – a lamb and potato dish cooked low and slow
• Side Salad: Cypriot Village Salad 
• Beverage: Watermelon Lime Spritzer
• Dessert: Paris on Ice – a layered gelatin dessert made with cherry jelly and condensed milk.

There are 500+ Recipes on The Purple Pumpkin Blog for you to enjoy – please feel free to check them out too!

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