Chicken, lemon and orzo soup
By:
Emily Gussin
Food producer and sustainability lead, delicious.
- Published: 11 Jan 23
- Updated: 18 Mar 24
Inspired by avgolemono, a traditional Greek dish that sees eggs and lemon juice whisked up to thicken chicken broth, this light, creamy and zesty soup is perfect for cold winter evenings.
Use up an open packet of orzo with these easy orzo recipes.
Ingredients
- 350-400g free-range chicken thigh fillets, any excess fat trimmed
- 1 onion, sliced
- 70g orzo
- 3 medium free-range eggs
- 2 lemons
- 80g baby spinach
Method
- Put the chicken and onion in a large saucepan and cover with 1.5 litres cold water. Cover and bring to a simmer, then leave to cook gently for about 15 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through. Lift the chicken out onto a board and scoop out a large mugful of the broth.
- Bring the liquid left in the pan back to the boil, add the orzo and cook for 2 minutes less than it says on the packet. Meanwhile, shred the chicken with two forks. When the orzo is done, return the chicken to the broth and keep over a low heat.
- Put the eggs in a bowl and juice 1½ of the lemons, cutting the final half into wedges to serve. Use a balloon whisk to whip the eggs for a few minutes until frothy, then continue whisking while adding the lemon juice. Slowly add the mugful of reserved liquid, still whisking. Once all combined, pour the mixture into the pan of orzo and chicken and add the spinach. Cook, stirring, for about 3 minutes, to thicken the soup a little, but be careful not to boil it.
- Season the soup with salt then divide between bowls and serve with plenty of black pepper on top and the lemon wedges on the side.
- Recipe from January 2023 Issue
Nutrition
- Calories
- 238kcals
- Fat
- 7g (1.9g saturated)
- Protein
- 27.1g
- Carbohydrates
- 15.7g (2.8g sugars)
- Fibre
- 1.9g
- Salt
- 0.4g
delicious. tips
The eggs are tempered with warm liquid before they’re added to the main pot in this dish to prevent them from curdling. Make sure your eggs are at room temperature before you start – if they are cold, this can also cause them to scramble.
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I added 3 chicken stock cubes to the broth when cooking the orzo. The recipe has no salt at all until the final seasoning stage so I felt this helped boost the flavour and it then required less salt when seasoning. Overall delicious recipe and really looked just like the picture. Will make again.