Crowd Sourced Soup Collection

There is one soup I’ll entertain, and that’s Kotosoupa Avgolemono: greek egg and lemon soup. I first discovered it in the fridge at my former workplace, Anthia Koullouros’s herbal apothecary in Paddington.

Anthia’s mum, Irene, would deliver all kinds of traditional dishes for her hardworking daughter (“eat! eat!”) including avgolemono, and us staff would lap up the leftovers like feral cats.

Avgolemono is everything a soup should be: hearty, umami and nourishing to the marrow. What gets me is how creamy it is, not because there’s a bunch of dairy in it but thanks to a magic trick involving a carefully tempered egg and rich, golden chicken broth.

(I reached out to Anthia to see if her family’s famous avgolemono recipe lives anywhere online, and in a moment of divine timing she said she was releasing it on her Substack today!

It originally appeared in Anthia’s classic cookbook I Am Food, still in print over ten years later and one of my all time faves.)

I have never been a soup person. I associate them with the empty/full feeling of drinking too much liquid, and worry about getting hungry again half an hour later. I know I’m wrong. I know there are delicious and worthy soups out there, like avgolemono.

…but after so many years of giving soup the cold shoulder, I’m stuck for recipes that’ll repair the relationship.

It’s minus two degrees here in Djaara Country and if we don’t fill our bellies with hot slop we may die.

I would LOVE to hear your favourite soups in the comments, either full recipes or rough descriptions, creating one big communal cauldron of soupspiration that’ll get us through winter.