I have wanted to make this soup forever, and I have no idea what’s been stopping me.
Avgolemono is the chicken soup of Greece, and as we know, pretty much every country has its own version of a comforting chicken soup. In Greek, avgolemono means “egg lemon” — which is appropriate because the soup is built on a broth that is rich with eggs and deliciously bright and tangy with lemon juice.
While cooking the raw chicken in the simmering broth adds extra richness to the soup, you also could make the broth and simply add leftover cooked and shredded or chopped chicken. Just add about 6 cups shredded or diced cooked chicken along with the cooked rice.
When you gradually add the hot broth to the egg mixture, you are tempering the eggs. If you were to add the egg mixture to the pot all at once, even if you whisked very fast, you would end up with cooked strands of eggs punctuating the soup. In some soups, this is desirable — think egg drop soup at a Chinese restaurant — but not in this one. Adding the hot liquid in a slow steady stream to the eggs, while whisking all the while, thickens the eggs but keeps them from scrambling.