Greek Chicken Noodle Soup

It’s getting to be soup weather here in the northern California wine country. We are finally starting to get some rain and it actually seems like a start to a normal winter. Hopefully no drought this year and plenty of snow in the sierras to play and ski.

I always make homemade chicken stock and have jars of frozen stock in the freezer.  Stock is so easy to make, I save all my rotisserie chicken carcasses that we have on those quick, easy dinner nights. I also save all the vegetable cuttings from meals during the week and freeze them. They usually consist of end pieces of onion, garlic, celery, leeks, zucchini and such. They all go into the stock pot with additional celery, carrots and onion, bay leaves, peppercorns, strip of kombu and any ends of hard cheeses that are leftover.

Avgolemono soup traditionally has rice in it, but I decided to use noodles like the good ole chicken noodle soup I made for my kids as they were growing up. It’s cool to see my 23 year old daughter, in her own apartment, saving/freezing vegetables scraps and chicken carcasses and making her own soups.

Ingredients

5 cups      Chicken stock If you don’t have homemade, use your favorite stock off the shelf

1              Egg separated

1-2          Carrots, chopped

2             Celery stalks, chopped

1/2 cup  Mushrooms, sliced

1             Zucchini, sliced

1            Lemon, juice of

Preparation

Add everything but the egg and lemon into a pot and cook over medium heat until vegetables are tender, 30 minutes(?). By all means, add chicken if you have it. Didn’t have any tonight 🙂

Beat egg white until stiff, then add beaten egg yolk and you continue beating.

Slowly add the lemon juice. Continue beating and add some of the hot chicken broth slowly to temper the egg.

Return egg mixture to broth pot and simmer a few minutes on LOW. Do not boil.

Serve at once. Don’t forget the fresh French bread.

Serves 2

I also make my own Greek style olives. The recipe is from my Mom’s village Limni on the island of Evia, Greece. I’ll share that recipe soon, the olives are almost done!