Chicken Avgolemono Soup

When life gives you lemons, make avgolemono.

This delicious, lemon-flavored soup is the perfect meal for anyone seeking creamy, soothing comfort on a cold winter’s night. Being deeply nutritious and easy to digest, it also makes excellent convalescent food. What’s more, it’s simple and quick to prepare, especially if you have a pressure cooker or Instant Pot.

Often considered a Greek dish, avgolemono (which in Greek literally means “egg–lemon”) is originally Sephardic Jewish: indeed, Claudia Roden, the doyenne of Jewish cooking, describes it as the “cornerstone of Sephardic cooking.” Sauces and soups made with egg yolk and lemon juice mixed with broth, heated until they thicken are found in Greek, Arab, Sephardic Jewish, Turkish, Balkan and Jewish-Italian cuisine. (To find out more about this time-honored preparation, check out its Wikipedia entry.)

There are hundreds of versions of avgolemono soup; some include chicken and vegetables, whereas others simply combine chicken broth and the egg-lemon sauce (like a tangy Mediterranean version of eggdrop soup). Most include a starch such as rice or orzo pasta, which I have replaced here with steel-cut oats which have a lower glycemic impact, more fiber and nutrients, and which yield in a beautifully creamy texture.

The magic ingredient in avgolemono is the egg-lemon sauce from which it takes its name; it transforms a rather ordinary combination of chicken, pasta and broth into a bowlful of creamy, silky, tangy delight. People’s tolerance for lemon’s acidity varies — I personally use just a little juice and add a pinch of lemon zest to reinforce the soup’s lemony aromas while keeping a lid on its acidity. With high-impact ingredients like lemon juice it’s safer to put in a little at first and add more as needed, rather than going whole hog and then scrambling to find ways to buffer all that acidity.