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Avgolemono Rice
![Avgolemono Rice](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/04/16/magazine/16eat2/16eat2-articleLarge-v4.jpg?width=1280&quality=75&auto=webp)
- Total Time
- 30 minutes
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
- Coarse kosher salt, for cooking rice and for seasoning the sauce
- 1¼cups jasmine rice
- ¾cup frozen small peas
- 2cups excellent homemade brown lamb stock (using well-roasted bones; even better if bits of meat remain)
- 5large egg yolks
- ¼cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 4scallions, sliced in ⅓-inch rings, on a slight bias
- Freshly and finely ground black pepper
Preparation
- Step 1
Bring 8 cups of water to a rolling boil. Season lightly with salt. Rinse the rice, and pour into boiling water, stirring well to keep grains from clumping. When the water returns to a boil, lower heat a little to a gentle boil, and cook the rice “pasta-style” until just done.
- Step 2
Drain the rice through a fine-mesh colander, giving it a couple of hearty shakes to remove the last of the water. Immediately spread cooked rice out on a sheet pan lined with parchment to cool quickly. Do not pat down or pack the rice — you want it fluffy and to be able to cool and dry quickly.
- Step 3
Rinse the peas under cool water briefly to remove any frosty crystals.
- Step 4
Bring the lamb stock to a simmer.
- Step 5
In a stainless bowl, whisk egg yolks and lemon juice together until fully incorporated.In a slow steady stream, while constantly whisking, add half the hot lamb stock into the yolks. Then whisk the egg-lemon mixture back into the remaining stock.
- Step 6
Return the pot to the stove, and simmer (still whisking constantly so as not to cook the egg too fast and too hard), until the avgolemono sauce is full-bodied, approximately the consistency of buttermilk — a minute or 90 seconds more.
- Step 7
Stir in the scallions, then the peas, and when they both turn bright green, turn off the heat, and stir in the rice. Season to taste with salt and pepper. The rice should be as soupy as risi e bisi and as creamy as risotto.
Private Notes
Cooking Notes
In Step One, for how long do you cook the rice “pasta-style” until just done? As with pasta, is there a test to tell whether the rice is done cooking?
I find it's somewhere around the 5 minute mark but just pull out a few kernels and see how done they are. For this recipe I did mine al-dente to start and finished in the stock-egg mixture to help coat the rice more totally and thicken the sauce with some of the rice starch
Eat some
Really excellent use of left-over lamb stock. I used stock from the bones that were leftover from the wonderful Persian braised lamb recipe by David Tanis. (Honestly, the broth made from those bones was one of the most decadent liquids I've ever consumed).
The recipe was quite tasty and I poached a few chopped carrots and mushrooms in the broth before straining them out and reserving for adding in along with the peas and scallions. Nice extra bit of texture. Would make again!
As in most rice cooking, the answer to "how long?" is "it depends", but I would start checking at 8 to 10 minutes.
Pasta style just means to cook with more water than would be normally used to cook rice (when the water used is absorbed by the rice). I would just check it periodically to see if it is tender and done.,
I am going to try adding some small meatballs made with mint and oregano to add that "other note"
I usually do, and it's always been fine whether the recipe said so or not.
Possibly try tasting it?!
The key here is the verb: "drain" through the colander, not "pass" or "mash" through the colander.
Needs another "dimension" of flavor. It's bright with the lemon, green onions, and peas but still missing "something." Love the idea but...hmmmm...
Tasty! A little tangier than I thought it was going to be, so I might hold back a bit on the lemon juice next time.
In step 2 it says "through a colander"....really? As in, pass it through compromising the shape and texture? Or just put in the colander?
Excellent, and bright Springtime dish. When straining the rice I quickly rinsed it under cold water right in the colander. That has the dual purpose of stopping the cooking, and removing any residual starch to keep the grains fluffy and separate.
A definite keeper.
Cynthia, the key words here are "fine-mesh" in that implement description. Think fine-mesh strainer and you can't go wrong.
Love this! So simple and easy and elegant! I did add some garlic powder to the generous bit of salt and ground pepper. I had no trouble with the lemon/egg sauce thickening once added to the rice. When it completed cooking together- it was more soupy than I wanted it to be or what the photo looked like. I let it sit for 10 minutes so the rice could absorb the extra sauce. And it did. Delicious! And cold leftovers the next day were spectacular too.
I agree with the commenter who said it is missing a dimension. It’s overly complicated for a sour-tasting, too-lemony rice dish. Rice-a-roni would have been a more flavorful option, and probably less sodium by the time I was done adding salt to give this dish some flavor!
Loved this dish! I made this with 3 whole eggs instead of 5 eggs yolks. It was a little runny but still delicious. Made with farro instead of rice. Chicken less broth instead of lamb. Added two cloves garlic, dill, 1/2 chopped yellow onion (along with the 4 scallions) and red pepper flakes. Yummy! Served with Greek salad
Made as the recipe calls for it. Not the best NYT Cooking recipe. I was hoping for something a bit richer. Maybe if you made a lemon-y bechmel sauce? It was just missing some complexity and flavor.
I used cooked jasmine rich from the fridge. Easy and delicious!
I was looking for a different and tasty way to prepare rice, and I found exactly that with this recipe. I'd never heard of it before, but it seemed fairly straightforward, so I gave it a try. I followed the recipe exactly (except I only had long grain, not jasmine rice) and it turned out great! The only glitch was the lemon juice-egg yolk mixture never thickened, so I helped it out with a couple teaspoons of cornstarch and voila! Oh, and it needed lots of salt and pepper.
This was a disappointment. I followed the recipe almost exactly, subbing veg broth for beef broth bc of my vegetarian daughter. It ended up tasting like this, unsweetened lemon curd with scallions got poured over my rice. I added a little soy sauce, which helped balance the eggy-ness a little, but not enough to make it taste great. Just edible. Anyone else have this issue?
My egg yolks and lemon did not thickens. I ended up using only 1 and 1/4 cups of it. It came out nice but too much lemon juice made it too assertive.
This is in Gabrielle Hamilton’s Prune cookbook. Made it tonight from the cookbook as an accompaniment to salmon with chicken stock replacing lamb stock. I think the lemon is too assertive. This recipe asks for 1/4 cup vs the books 1/2 cup. Way to assertive. The fatty lamb stock will subdue the lemon. I added butter...but it didn’t help much. Like many recipes where we have to make serious change...# of servings..substitutions..most recipe websites and cookbooks leave you pretty much to your own
Used riced cauliflower instead of rice. Delicious.
I am going to try adding some small meatballs made with mint and oregano to add that "other note"
Avgolemono soup is one of the first "foreign" foods I loved as a child, so I was really looking forward to this dish. It was fun to make, with the unusual cooking techniques, but the result was disappointing. I used Better-Than-Bouillon beef flavor since I didn't have lamb broth on hand. Also the egg/broth mixture refused to thicken past plain-milk-thickness after 5-6+ minutes on the heat, though my yolks were from large eggs. Dunno what went wrong. Your results may vary.
1 1/2 cups of rice
1 cup of frozen peas
1/2 cup lemon juice (3 lemons)
1 bunch scallions
1 3/4 cups rice
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 cup of peas
1 bunch scallions
Excellent, and bright Springtime dish. When straining the rice I quickly rinsed it under cold water right in the colander. That has the dual purpose of stopping the cooking, and removing any residual starch to keep the grains fluffy and separate.
A definite keeper.
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