My favourite soup of all time! Every my mom would tell us she was going to make this, it always brought a smile to our faces.
Most commonly known as avgolemono, it means egg and lemon in Greek, and in Turkish terbiyeli kofte corbasi means sour seasoned meatball soup, how ever you call it…its a delicious hearty soup!
For meatballs:
- 1lb lean ground beef
- 1/4 cup rice long or short grain for meatballs
- 1 small onion chopped small
- 2 tsp dried mint or fresh
- 2 tsp dried oregano
- 1/4 tsp cumin (optional)
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- 1 egg white
- 1/3 cup rice short or long grain
- 1 chicken or vegetable flavoured msg free cubes (optional)
Mix all ingredients (except the 1/3 rice for the soup and chicken cube), shape into small meatballs. Have a med- large pot of boiling water (season with some salt ) drop meatballs inside.
As meatballs start to cook you will notice foam on the surface( like when making chicken soup) remove with spoon discard. Add 1/3 cup of rice at this point. On medium heat let simmer for 30 mins or so till rice and meatballs are finished cooking. Add chicken cube if desired at this point.
Garnish:
- 1-2 egg yolk
- lemon juice from 1 whole lemon
- black pepper
- 1/2 tsp turmeric (optional)
When rice and meatballs are cooked, in a cup temper the egg yolk with the hot liquid from soup, (so it wont become scrambled eggs when adding to soup). Add to soup stir fast. Add lemon juice. Adjust flavour with salt and lemon to your liking, you may add the turmeric now if you wish. Remove from heat.
If you want a hearty soup add 1 potato cut into small cubes, or 1/4 cup of green/brown lentils. Also you can add 1/2 cup of rice instead of 1/3. Add extra ingredients if using when adding rice to soup
For the Chicken Soup:
- 4-6 pieces of chicken
- 1 carrot
- 1 onion
- 2 chicken flavoured cubes
- 1/2 cup noodles
- 1 lemon
- 2 egg yolks
Bring chicken, onion and carrot to boil. When chicken is done boiling, debone the chicken, strain the broth, if you like you can cut up the carrot and add to the broth. Crumble the chicken cube in the broth and bring the noodles to boil in the broth, add some of the chicken back into the soup. When the noodles are done, temper the egg yolk with the soup and whisk in the soup fast.
Add the lemon juice and then season with salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!
NEWEST VERSION:
I have learned some new ways of making this after watching some Instagram videos from Turkish food bloggers.
So I started to make it like this now, instead of adding rice to the meat, I just add onions and seasonings and then pan fry them in butter and dried mint, then add it to the soup. The meatballs have so much more flavour that way. I also make the meatballs much smaller than the ones in these photos. I make them like this meatball-soup/.
For the meatballs I add 1/2 onion chopped up, cumin, dried mint, dried oregano, salt and pepper to season. I don’t measure the seasonings I just eye it.
Pan fry them up in some butter and a sprinkle of dried mint. Once they are done add them to the finished soup.
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