Last week, I told you about preserved lemons and an umami-rich chicken dish in which to use them. This week, I want to tell you about how I used the last of the lemons and a chicken breast to feed myself for pennies.
The classic Greek soup (and sometimes sauce) avgolemono incorporates a bit of cooked shredded chicken into a base of chicken stock, rice (or little pasta shapes), eggs and lemon juice.
You may think that soup is the last thing you want to eat when temperatures are well above 100 degrees. But try this easy, fast soup anyway. I think you’ll see that its soothing and satisfying bright flavors make it worth your while. Every time I eat it, I feel like I’m eating good health in a bowl.
This recipe also gives me the opportunity to talk about tempering eggs, a useful skill for all kinds of applications. You’ll see a tempering step in custard recipes, some kinds of baking, and various other places, including fruit curds and butters. The goal is to use the eggs’ thickening power without scrambling them.
Understanding the science underpinning that thickening power may help you understand why tempering is so important.
Eggs can hold as much as four times their own weight in moisture. But because the proteins in eggs set at different temperatures, the eggs must be cooked gently to put this property to work.
Egg white sets fully at about 149 degrees, while egg yolk begins to set at 144 degrees, and is fully set at 158 degrees. A whole egg, whether in the shell or beaten, sets at about 156 degrees.
If you add a boiling liquid to a beaten egg, because the liquid is logically at 212 degrees or so, you will quickly cause the egg to set — desirable in scrambled eggs, not so desirable when we’re trying to use the egg’s thickening power. Consider Egg Drop Soup, where the goal is that the cloud-like eggs should form almost the second the beaten egg is dropped into the boiling broth.
For thickening, though, the goal is to keep the temperature of the beaten egg below 156 degrees if its thickening power is what we’re after. We can do that gently by adding a little warm liquid to the beaten egg — but not too much. Once the egg is warmed in this way, it’s less likely to set immediately on hitting the hotter liquid.
We can also manage the heat of the liquid we’re adding to the beaten eggs. By reducing the soup to a bare simmer, the thickening properties of the egg are preserved. As a guide, water at 150 degrees shows bubbles on about half the bottom of the pan; at 160 degrees, bubbles begin forming along the sides of the pan. Water begins to steam at 170 degrees, so we don’t want our broth that hot for this soup.
All that makes tempering sound more complex than it is. Just follow the instructions below, and you’ll have a lovely light meal in under 30 minutes.
Avgolemono, or Greek lemon-chicken soup
Makes 2 servings
Figure about 2 cups of broth and a cup of shredded chicken per serving, so if you’d like to double or triple this recipe, you’ll need to do the math. It’s important to temper the lemon-egg mixture with a little broth before adding the mixture to the soup pot. Otherwise, the eggs will scramble and the soup won’t have its customary silky texture.
Ingredients
4 cups chicken broth
1 large boneless, skinless chicken breast or 2 cups shredded cooked chicken
¾ cup uncooked rice, orzo or pastina
Salt and pepper, to taste
Three eggs, lightly beaten
¼ cup fresh lemon juice (about the juice from 1 large lemon)
Preparation
In a large saucepan over medium heat, bring the broth to a boil. Add the chicken breast and reduce the heat to simmer. Poach the chicken breast until it is thoroughly cooked, about 10 minutes. Remove the chicken breast and set aside to cool. If you’re using already cooked chicken, wait to add it in a later step.
Add the rice, orzo or pastina to the broth and cook until tender — about 20 minutes for rice, or seven minutes for the orzo or pastina. Season with salt and pepper and reduce heat to low.
Meanwhile, shred the cooked chicken breast. Whisk the eggs and lemon juice together in a medium bowl until smooth. When the rice or pasta is tender, ladle about 1 cup of the simmering broth into the egg-lemon mixture, whisking well, then add the mixture back to the saucepan.
Cook, stirring, until the soup thickens slightly and becomes opaque, about 2 minutes. Stir in the cooked shredded chicken and add more salt and pepper if desired. Continue to simmer until the chicken is heated through, stirring often, about three minutes. Serve immediately. To serve, garnish each dish with fresh dill, thyme or oregano.
