Send help. I’ve been bedridden all night/day with food poisoning. I’ll spare you the gory details, since this is a food blog, but safe to say I’ve been left weak and hungry.

I recently had Souvla’s avgolemeno soup last week, and it was so satisfying and homey, I knew I needed to make some for my malnourished self. This soup is super comforting if you’re sick or having stomach issues, and it’s actually a pretty easy recipe–you can definitely use store bought chicken stock instead of making the stock as follows, but it tastes much more homemade and cozy if you follow the recipe below. As an added bonus, you can stretch your dollar by buying a whole chicken instead of stock + chicken meat itself. Leftover chicken meat can be stored away for another meal!

You will need:

• 1 whole chicken (about 5 pounds)
• 3 eggs
• 2-3 lemons
• 3/4 cup uncooked white rice
• water
• salt and pepper to taste

First, rinse your chicken and remove any innards. Put the chicken in a large pot and cover with water. You don’t want the pot to be too large, or else your broth will be bland and watery. Mine looked like this:

As pictured above, bring up to a boil, cover, and let the chicken simmer for about an hour.

When the hour is up your chicken should be super tender and easy to shred. Remove the chicken from the pot and put it in a bowl, so you can take some of the meat off. With your broth still simmering, add the rice. Give it a good stir and let it hang out for about 20 minutes.

In the meantime, get a medium sized bowl and beat 3 eggs. Add the juice of 2 or 3 lemons directly to the mixture. I like my soup on the lemon-y side, so I used 3. But if you’re not sure, start with 2 lemons, and you can always just squeeze some extra lemon juice in the pot when it’s all done.

You should be left with a super pale yellow mixture. Now you want to temper the egg mixture; if you pour it directly into the hot broth the eggs will scramble, so we have to slowly warm it up. Put a ladle of hot broth into the egg mixture, whisk, and repeat several times until the egg mixture is warm.

By the time it’s warm enough, it should be about double the volume. Pour the tempered egg mixture into the pot, and give everything a good stir.

Add the shredded chicken meat, and salt and pepper to taste. 

Give it all a good stir, and you’re done!

Oh, and don’t forget to share some chicken with your pup.