Breakfast of Champions: Lemon Rice Soup

Well, now - this is embarrassing. I jotted down the ingredients for this recipe, which I'm always losing in my file, and saved it as a draft.....except I actually published it. Oops. No instructions, no snappy commentary at the beginning, just 4 ingredients with no explanation whatsoever. Note to self: Pay attention. So here it is again, with a little more useful explanation.

We now return to our regularly scheduled blogging.

My kids love eating at this little diner near our house. The food is nothing particularly special, just your standard Metro Detroit Greek-ish place that's a step up from a coney, but there are huge windows on 3 sides of the restaurant so you can watch all the goings-on while you eat (which is either distracting or exciting, depending on how you look at it). I also think they love it so much because you can get any menu item at any time of day, which means that their desire to eat lemon rice soup at breakfast can be easily accommodated when the grownups want omelettes.

Jen, this post was bit of a lemon!

This is one of my very favorite soups, but not every coney serves it, the quality isn't consistent, and we're never entirely confident that it's safe for David and John to eat. I have a big file of recipes I've collected from random places over the years; this came from the Detroit News Lifestyle section sometime in the late 80s. It's so completely perfect that I've never seen a need to alter it, just a bit of salt and pepper at the end.

It is a bit of a princess, as soups go - you can pretty much ignore it at the beginning, but the egg and lemon part takes a bit of fussing and you have to be careful to keep the heat low or you'll cook the eggs (in an icky way). That little bit of bother is more than balanced out by the absolute simplicity of the ingredients; you don't have to chop a single thing.

Lemon Rice Soup

6 cups chicken broth
1/2 c. rice
1/4 cup lemon juice (from an actual lemon - if you use bottled lemon juice you'll be sad when it's time to eat this)
3 eggs

Bring the broth to a boil in large saucepan. Add the rice, reduce the heat, and simmer about 20 minutes, until the rice is very tender.

In a very large measuring cup, whisk together the lemon juice and eggs. When the rice is done, slowly add about 1/2 cup of the broth to the lemon-egg mixture, stirring the entire time. If you rush this step, the egg will start to cook and the soup will look extremely gross; take your time and go slowly.

Once the broth, lemon, and egg are mixed, slowly pour the mixture into the saucepan, stirring constantly. Add salt and pepper to suit your own taste - is it lemony enough? add a little more lemon juice if you need to - and serve immediately. I suggest eating it all in one sitting since it never seems to reheat well.

Note: If you go too quickly with the pouring and stirring and end up with grody eggy clumps or strands in your soup, get out your immersion blender (which is a really handy thing to have around the kitchen, and has saved me from getting burned putting soup into my blender) and blend the heck out of this, then pour it through a strainer before serving (yes, it's a bit of overkill but I really don't like egg clumps in my soup). You'll end up with a thick soup with no distinct rice bits, but it will still taste very good.