Magiritsa soup is an essential Greek Easter dish. Find out my method to make it using lamb shanks instead of offal.
Magiritsa soup and Greek Easter go hand-in-hand. After fasting for 40 days, Greek Orthodox Christians break their fast after midnight church services with a heaping bowl of this lamb soup laced with an egg-lemon sauce.
The recipe is similar to Avgolemono Soup, which also has the egg-lemon sauce and rice. But that’s where the similarities end. It happens to be one of the more polarizing dishes of the holiday. Greeks traditionally make Magiritsa using the offal from their Easter lamb. And to some guts aren’t all that glorious. So I’m offering you an alternative recipe.
My family’s Magiritsa recipe
Growing up in Dayton, Ohio, my smallish family didn’t have a reason to source a whole lamb on Easter (and therefore didn’t seek out the offal for their Magiritsa recipe). Instead my yiayia always used lamb shanks to make this soup. (I actually didn’t know that offal was traditional until much later in life.)
So what we make is a beautiful lamb broth using the shanks and aromatics like fennel, green onions, and dill. Then we cut up the lamb, add it back to the soup with rice, and fold in the avgolemono (egg-lemon) sauce. My mother always made the soup a day or two ahead of time in her Greek Easter prep. Then she waited until right before we were ready to eat it to add the avgolemono sauce.
Avgolemono sauce tips
People get intimidated with avgolemono sauce — most popularly used in Avgolemono Soup (with chicken). However, I’m here to tell you that it’s actually really easy to master. The trick is to properly temper your eggs in the sauce, and take your soup off the heat to fold it in. That really eliminates the possibility that the sauce will curdle. Additionally, if you’re using a blender, adding some of the cooked rice to the sauce will also eliminate the chance for curdling.
Is Magiritsa a recipe you traditionally enjoy? Let me know about your family’s Easter traditions in the comments.
Recipe
Ingredients
For the soup
- 2 lamb shanks
- 8 cups water
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 cups celery, chopped
- 1 fennel bulb (you can also incorporate the leafy fronds for more flavor, but not the green stalks), diced
- 2 teaspoons Kosher salt
- 1 cup scallions, chopped
- 1/2 cup long-grain rice, (you could also use orzo though that's not traditional)
- 1/2 cup dill, chopped
- Black pepper, to taste
For the sauce
- 5 eggs
- 3 medium lemons, juice of
- 1 tablespoon flour (optional, but helps thicken the sauce)
Instructions
- Trim/clean lamb shanks. Season them liberally with salt and pepper. Let them stand for an hour.
- Place shanks in an 8-quart pot and cover with the water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cover and reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour. While the shanks simmer, skim off any impurities that collect on top. Remove the shanks from the pot. Cool and cut them into bite-sized pieces. Strain broth into a large bowl.
- In the same pot, heat olive oil over medium-hight heat. Add the celery, fennel, and 1 teaspoon salt. Cook for about 5 minutes.
- Stir in the scallions and garlic and cook for 1-2 minutes more, until aromatic and the white parts of the scallions start to become translucent.
- Pour in the strained broth, rice and lamb. Bring the soup to a boil. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes, until the rice is cooked. Stir in the dill.
- To make the sauce: In a blender (or bowl if using a hand-held mixer or whisk); combine eggs until light yellow and frothy.
- Pour in lemon juice and flour and thoroughly combine.
- Now, you're going to temper your sauce with the hot broth.
- With the blender on low speed (or while you're hand mixing/whisking), slowly add 1-2 cups of the hot broth from the soup pot to your egg-lemon mixture.
- Turn off heat. Fold the tempered sauce into the soup and continuously stir it until everything is incorporated, about 1-2 minutes.
- Ladle out into bowls. Garnish with lots of black pepper. Adjust taste adding more lemon, pepper, etc.
Notes
You can make the soup ahead, and make and fold in the avgolemono sauce right before serving.