It’s all Greek for National Soup Month

When Ioannis Bougiouris was a boy in Athens, he split his time between the city he called home and the village where his mother grew up, Vresthena.

“For the holidays, for the weekends and every summer, we used to go,” says Bougiouris, chef/owner of Zorba’s Kitchen in Orlando.

There, his grandmother, Olga, lived among the villagers, “maybe 200 people,” he says (a recent Greek census puts the number at 333).

“She was the one who taught my mom to cook. And she was always cooking for everybody, all the kids, all the grandkids.”

And among the things he has remembered for so long that he cannot remember when he started remembering them was avgolemono.

“It is like medicine!” he says. “When somebody was getting sick, you wouldn’t hear anybody say, ‘I need a doctor. My grandmother would say, ‘I got you. I make you the avgolemono soup.’”

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At its foundation, not surprisingly, avgolemono is what every other culture in the world employs during flu season: chicken broth.

But this steaming cauldron of penicillin has its own unique twist that the name gives away up front, eggs and lemon, the former of which imparts a silky, creamy texture, the latter a wonderful burst of tartness.

In Greece, and perhaps even more so in the States, avgolemono is considered a staple, something you’ll find on virtually all Greek menus or at least, as is the case at Zorba’s, a regularly rotating special, but many people — including those I spoke to for this piece — are unaware that its roots, which date back as far as the 10th Century, lie in Spain, and its Sephardic Jewish community.

I didn’t know, either. But the quest for knowledge took me down a warm and wonderful rabbit hole for this, the last in our National Soup Month series for 2025 (and on a day that began with 40 degree temps, yikes!).

Born of a dressing called agristada, which combined lemon with egg to make a creamy, zesty accompaniment that adhered to kosher dietary laws, the Jewish people took with it them when they were expelled from Spain during the Inquisition, wrote Nosher’s Emily Paster, and introduced it to the Mediterranean cultures where they settled, including Turkey, Italy and Greece.

“Ottoman diners already had a penchant for sour flavors…” Paster wrote. “So it is not surprising that agristada, with its lemony bite, became part of the larger Greek and Turkish cuisine.”

Over time, agristada morphed into a variety of dishes and condiments still used today in these countries, avgolemono perhaps the most famous of all.

“It is so unique and most important, it’s so healthy,” says Vassilis Coumbaros, chef/owner of festive I-Drive favorite Taverna Opa, where every day you’ll find the same version of the soup the Coumbaros family eats at home.

Like Bougiouris, his personal history with the soup begins with his yia yia.

“She always would boil the chickens, make some rice … and the egg you put in just to thicken it up.”

Timing and temperature, says Coumbaros, are the secret ingredients.

“After the beginning — you make the mirepoix (carrots, onions, celery) — and you put it in the hot water with the chicken and let it boil for about an hour. Then, when you take the ingredients out, in order to succeed, you have to drop the temperature of the broth down to about 90 degrees.”

At the restaurant, a thermometer is employed. At home, a finger.

“Like my grandma used to do it,” he says. “She’d say if her finger could tolerate the temperature, then it’s good to mix.”

This is because soup that’s too hot will cook the eggs rather than temper them.

Some chefs, and both chefs’ grandmothers, would beat yolks and white separately before combining them with a few ladles full of cooler broth. Leaving the eggs out of the fridge for a spell helps, too, bringing them a little closer to room temperature. Steady stirring helps blend the eggs and broth together before a similar, slow and steady technique allows for combining with the larger pot of cooled-off soup.

Lemon is at the chefs’ discretion.

“I make it quite lemony here at the restaurant, which is how the people like it,” says Bougiouris, whose version skips the mirepoix. Fall-apart soup chicken and rice are added later, though, in later years, some regions of Greece began using orzo instead.

“In the restaurant, I like to add some dill and a little green onions for extra flavor,” says Coumbaros, chuckling.

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Green is always an appetizing touch on any plate (he doesn’t do it at home; the kids don’t like it), but grandma’s recipe is something everyone loves when the weather gets cold, he says. Or if you happen to catch one.

“If we were sick or had a light flu or fever, she would always give us chicken-lemon soup,” he says. “It’s free medicine!’

Open up and say ahhhhh.

Find me on Facebook, X or Instagram (@amydroo) or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com. For more fun, join the Let’s Eat, Orlando Facebook group.