a typical Italian soup that’s loaded with Romano cheese and delicious vegetables. Prior to serving, top with extra Romano.
| Prep Time: | 1 hr |
| Cook Time: | 1 hr 30 mins |
| Total Time: | 2 hrs 30 mins |
| Servings: | 12 |
| Yield: | 3 quarts |
Ingredients
- 1 (3 pound) whole chicken
- 3 quarts water
- 11 carrots
- 6 stalks celery
- 2 onions
- ½ cup uncooked white rice
- 6 ounces baby spinach, chopped
- ½ cup grated Romano cheese
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
- ½ teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 3 (14 ounce) cans chicken broth
- 4 eggs, lightly beaten
Instructions
- Cut up chicken into large pieces and place in a large soup pot with the water. Chop 8 carrots, 3 stalks of celery and 1 onion and place them in the pot as well. Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce heat and simmer 45 minutes, until chicken is tender. Remove chicken and reserve stock. When cool enough to handle, bone chicken and cut meat into bite-size pieces.
- Process reserved stock in a blender or food processor or using an immersion blender and return it to the pot with the chicken meat. Chop the remaining 3 carrots, 3 stalks of celery and 1 onion and stir into the chicken mixture with the rice. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until rice is tender, about 20 minutes.
- Remove chicken mixture from heat and stir in spinach, Romano, salt, pepper, lemon juice and oregano. Set aside.
- In large saucepan, bring chicken broth to a boil. Pour the eggs into the boiling broth, slowly, in a thin stream. Remove the broth from the heat and stir it into the chicken mixture. Serve hot.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 255 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 15 g |
| Cholesterol | 119 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 3 g |
| Protein | 22 g |
| Saturated Fat | 4 g |
| Sodium | 1048 mg |
| Sugars | 4 g |
| Fat | 12 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
WOW! What an excellent cold day soup! A little time consuming, but WELL worth it. After reading other reviews, I did double the lemon juice, but that’s the only adjustment I made. Everything else by the book. And it’s now my husband’s favorite soup. This from a man that LOVES his soups! Thank you DOREENB for the great recipe!
This is just ok as is for the time and work involved. I found it a luttle bland. I added about a cup of parmasean to the pot after trying it and that made it much tastier
I would describe this delicious soup as a cross between Chicken Rice, Chicken Vegetable, and Eggdrop soup. I prepared it as instructed with very few variations. I did use a crockpot on the Low setting for 11 hours to prepare my chicken stock base, and I also strained the base after pureeing because I didn’t like the stringy celery pulp I was finding in it. My other deviation was not to add the remaining carrots and celery and to cook the eggs in only 32 ozs of chicken broth instead of 42 oz. I made these last changes just to keep the volume down because this recipe makes a LOT of soup. There’s no need to double it if you have a crowd, and be prepared for lots of leftovers if you don’t. As much as I love the soup, I dropped a star because the flavor probably doesn’t justify the effort required to make it. Between straining, pureeing, de-boning the chicken and cooking the eggs in broth separately, this was a fairly time-consuming recipe.
This wasn’t a real hit at our house. We found it rather boring. If I were ever to make again, I would add garlic, and cut down on the carrots. It was a bit carroty for us.
I love this recipe!!!!
I cooked everything in a crockpot (including raw chicken). Added extra fresh spinach and parm. cheese, and doubled the Oregano. Also left out egg, and it tasted good. Put in pre-cooked rice and it became way too soggy, so just try putting the uncooked rice in and add extra rice. Cooked on high or 3 hrs, but could probably do less time. It was a little overdone. Also, added spinach at end, and just let it set in the soup for 5-10 mins before serving. Nice flavor.
I don’t know if I didn’t follow the directions properly but after using the immersion blender I had a very unappealing orange mush. Had to drastically improvise after that.
Made as directed this soup contained too much broth and was quite bland. If I were to make this again it would be a complete re-write: add a full head of garlic to stock, more spinach, pasta in place of rice, omit 3 cans of chicken broth (instead remove some of the stock from the pot and allow to cool a bit before adding the eggs to temper and then returning to pot), and much more salt/pepper/seasonings.
I’ve never heard of this soup before but decided to give it a try. The soup is delicious and my family loved it! Thanks for sharing.
OMG, this is a great hearty soup. I was looking for something new to do with spinach and chicken and I hit the jack-pot with this recipe. I never cooked with a puree like that, and it added a nice rich thick consistancy to the recipe. can’t say enough, love it!!
Used Filini pasta (mini noodles) instead of rice; used less salt; more spices; added chopped spinach at the end; with mushrooms for a FANTASTIC soup! Served with fresh french bread from this site.. DELISH!
I did not use the 3 cans chicken broth and reduced the carrots down to 7 and celery down to 4 due to the reduced amount of liquid. I also reduced the eggs down to 3. Delicious
This was kind of labor intensive for me, but thats just cuz I always pretty busy. The end results were really good, I got raves from all of the family.
My husband loved it, but I thought it was a tad bland and next time I would use parm instead of romano.
The whole family enjoyed this. I did put in two cloves of garlic when I cooked the chicken. Then, I didn’t have enough celery to put more in after the blending, so I threw in half a can of corn. I also used canned spinach (and probably less than what the recipe calls for). I juiced two lemons rather than measuring the lemon juice, too. Oh, and when I made the egg-broth mixture, there was too much to add it all to the soup pot, so I only ended up using half of it. We liked it as it was, so I threw out the rest rather than adding it to the leftovers. I will make this again!
The perfect chicken soup. The ingredients are pretty classic for a chicken soup and if you put in quality you will most certainly be rewarded with a fantastic meal. I could eat this everyday.
This was amazing.
pretty good, makes lots of soup.
Excellent soup with a very authentic flavor. I used brown rice and added a couple tablespoons of chicken soup base for more salt and depth. Will make this again and again!
I am an experienced cook and did not find this recipe very flavorful. It was bland and missing something. Not sure where the egg is in the picture, but in my dish there was ALOT of egg all over the top of the soup (floating). This made the appearance unappealing.
I was looking for a recipe that uses spinach, and came across this. As I didn’t have a whole chicken, I used the legs & thighs I had in the freezer. I am watching fat intake, so I removed the skin and proceeded as the recipe instructs. It made a wonderful stock, a beautiful glisten, even w/o the skin on. At any rate, I followed the directions as written and came out with a beautiful hearty soup. When my husband came back later for a second bowl, it was then that he realized he didn’t get any chicken in the first bowl. He was surprised that he didn’t miss it. He added, “That’s how good this soup is, I didn’t miss the chicken.” I served it with biscuits from a recipe I got from this site called, “Cheese Garlic Biscuits II”. In this recipe though, I use 1 full tsp. of baking powder, instead of 1/2 and I add 3 minced cloves of garlic to the mix and omitted the brushing of butter once cooked. There is more than enough fat in this recipe, you’ll see it on the cookie sheet. They were warm & crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside. Right out of the oven to the table. A great pairing with the Stracciatella. Mangia! 🙂