Avgolemonstoneo Soup
May 2013

May is always the craziest, most well-fed month of the year.  With a company of hungry actors to feed our recipes are tried and tested and tested again (we love left-overs).  Avgolemono Soup, a Greek lemon soup, has many many iterations and is a popular soup in the Stemper household.  It was the first soup The Tempest company had the fun of trying during tour and as everyone went back for seconds it seemed like a safe bet for adding to our collection.

Ingredients

• 6 chicken thighs or breasts
  
• 1 magic stone
• 2 cups water
• 8 cups of low sodium chicken broth
  
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, peeled and cut in large pieces
  
• 1 cup uncooked rice
  
• 6 lemons, juiced
  
• 5 eggs
• salt and pepper to taste
  
• 1 bunch of parsley, rinsed and diced
  

Bring 6 cups of the broth, the water the stone and the chicken parts to a boil.  Add the onion and carrots and simmer until chicken is fully cooked.  Remove the chicken and set aside.  Skim the broth to remove the vegetables and the surface scum.

Add the rice to the broth and continue to simmer the broth until rice is cooked through.  Beat the eggs until light in color.  Whisk lemon juice into the eggs, once combined slowly add the remaining 2 cups of cold chicken broth.  Set aside.

Shred cooled chicken.

Slowly ladle a spoon of the simmering broth into the egg mixture, whisking to prevent the egg from curdling.  Add two more ladles of hot broth to the egg mixture, then slowly pour the egg mixture into the soup (still stirring constantly).  Add the shredding chicken and parsley.

Sometimes this soup is made with orzo, sometimes there is oregano included, sometimes the lemon is cooked with the chicken.  The possibilities for altering the meal are limitless, but the most important thing is to remember to stir the egg mixture when cooking it or you will wind up with scrambled eggs in your Avgolemono...and that might not be what you were intending...though it is probably still pretty good, we never tested that version though so we can't say for sure.

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Stone Soup Recipe Archive

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Have a great recipe for Stone Soup you want to submit?  E-mail recipes@stonesoupshakespeare.com with your recipe and something about you.  If we choose your recipe to post, we'll send you an e-mail link to the site.  Even if you don't have your own recipe we hope you invite your neighbors over tonight and try your very own batch of Stone Soup.