Greek chicken soup with wild parsley oil

Chicken soup isn’t a food that Greece is known for. Most tourists get a taste of Greece through gyros, moussaka, pastitsio, souvlaki and other similar dishes.

Greek chicken soup is however equally delicious, very comforting and really healthy.

In this version of the chicken soup, I added oats to thicken it and some wild parsley oil to flavor it.

First things first. BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN FORAGING WILD PARSLEY. It can look very similar to hemlock which is highly toxic for human and animals. Check out this post about correctly identifying wild parsley.

Now, let’s talk soup. For 4 bowls of this soup you will need:

• 200 gr chicken
• 1,5 lt chicken stock
• 0,5 cup rice
• 0,5 cup ground oatmeal
• 2 eggs
• juice of 2 lemons
• 1 cup wild parsley
• 1/4 cup rapeseed oil

Instructions:

Put chicken and chicken stock in a pot and bring to a boil. Add rice and salt and cook until rice is cooked.

Add ground oatmeal and simmer until the soup thickens. Adjust salt and pepper at this stage.

While you are waiting for soup to thicken, make the wild parsley oil by making parsley into a paste using a blender or pestle and mortar and adding the oil slowly.

Remove pot from heat once desired consistency is achieved. Add half the wild parsley oil and cover the pot with a lid. In a bowl, separate the egg whites from the yolks. Beat the whites until you have a meringue and add slowly the yolks and the lemon juice.

Then with a ladle take some of the soup liquid and pour it slowly in the bowl with the eggs while mixing. Repeat this process until the egg mix gets the approximately the same temperature as the soup. Then pour the egg mix in the pot and mix well.

The soup is ready to be served with some rustic bread and garnished with the remaining wild parsley oil.

Enjoy!