If you like soups, especially the easy ones, and you like lemon, this one’s for you. This recipe comes from “soup and sauce day” in a culinary boot camp attended in the summer of 2019 – you know, pre-COVID. It was only when I got around to making some recently that I realized the real benefit to this recipe – it’s very basic, and literally begs for you to take it to new levels and in new directions. For now I’ll stick to the pure and simple; you can go here for an explosion of ideas to take it further.
INGREDIENTS
4 cups chicken stock (homemade or store-bought)
1/4 long-grain rice
2 eggs
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (the juice of a good-sized lemon)
Salt and pepper to taste
DIRECTIONS
Heat the stock in a sauce pan or dutch oven until boiling. Stir in the rice and cover it. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 8-10 minutes, or until the rice is tender.
Whisk together the eggs and lemon juice in a bowl. Once fully combined, gradually add a ladleful of the hot stock to the egg mixture, whisking the entire time to temper the mixture and keep the eggs from scrambling.
Whisk the tempered egg mixture back into the hot stock. Cook, stirring constantly, just long enough to thicken the soup. Do not let the soup come to a boil.
Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve.
NOTES
As you would want a lemon soup to be, this one is very lemony. I’ve seen suggestions to add a pat of butter at the end to counter the lemon-ness of it. You’ll know if you want to try that when you taste it before adding any salt and pepper.
While this soup photographs thick and creamy, it is not quite as thick as some other cream soups. It’s still smooth and creamy (those eggs!); the lemon really lightens it on the tongue.
I’m a firm believer in using cubed chicken broth/stock/bouillon cubes. Not only do they save space, with a ratio of 1 cube to 1 cup of water to prepare, they make it easy to increase the ratios of ingredients without using only part of a 1 qt. carton of stock you’d buy at the store.
never 2 old 2 start cooking 