Stracciatella – Italian Egg Drop Soup

This classic Italian soup is easy to make, naturally keto-friendly, and extremely nourishing, thanks to eggs and Parmesan. A dash of lemon juice lends a delicious tang, and black pepper a piquant flavor. Use your favorite stock or broth as a base — with bone broth, this soup is super-healthy and nutritious!

How to make the Stracciatella – Italian Egg Drop Soup

This classic soup requires only a few ingredients and is very quick and easy to make. The actual cooking time is just one minute!

Usually, Stracciatella recipes don’t contain lemon juice, but I have added a dash to balance out the richness of the eggs and the Parmesan – and simply to lend more flavor.

I use salted vegetable stock in the photos and the video here – though my ultimate favorite is bone broth as it’s so nutritious. I just didn’t happen to have any bone broth at hand (a cardinal mistake! However, I had reindeer bone broth powder that I added to the soup on the quiet to make it even more nourishing).

But without further ado, let’s take a look at how to make this superb soup:

Take 4 cups (950 ml) chicken stock, vegetable stock, or bone broth. Bring to a boil and turn the heat to a minimum.

While bringing the stock or broth to a boil, take a small bowl and place there 3 eggs…

…and 1/4 cup (60 ml) lightly packed finely grated Parmesan cheese. In weight, it makes about 1 oz (30 g).

Stir…

…until well combined.

Pour the egg and cheese mixture into the simmering stock or broth. Do not stir yet!

Wait for 5 seconds.

Stir the soup so that the egg and cheese mixture forms thin strips.

Let simmer for 1 minute.

Add 2-3 teaspoons freshly-squeezed lemon juice…

…and to taste freshly ground black pepper — and more salt if needed.

Stir one final time until well combined.

Serve immediately.

 

How I came up with this Keto Stracciatella soup recipe

This week, I have been helping my parents. The thing is that my mom broke her arm recently. As she is a caregiver for my dad, who has severe dementia, she needs some help in taking care of my dad and also in her own daily activities.

As soups are the easiest dishes to eat for my dad, I was thinking of developing and posting a soup recipe here on my blog this week. I concluded the soup had to be nourishing and not too spicy. My dad has been enjoying our Ketokamu soups, but a change would be naturally welcome, I presumed.

I browsed through my idea list but found no soup idea I really would have wanted to develop further. I changed my view and started thinking of nutritious ingredients and making a soup based on those. For some reason, I was thinking of eggs and cheese in a soup. Eggs and cheese would be nutritious and provide precious protein as well.

But what kind of soup could I make with eggs and cheese? Suddenly, I noticed that Stracciatella soup aka. Italian egg drop soup would be exactly what I was looking for. Made with bone broth, eggs, and Parmesan, it was super-nutritious!

By the way, ”Stracciatella” also means something else: vanilla ice cream or gelato that contains chocolate flakes. There is also Stracciatella yogurt that is vanilla yogurt with chocolate chips or chocolate flakes. Stracciatella yogurt is actually my son’s favorite breakfast. I’ve created this recipe several years ago, but I have drastically simplified the recipe after that. The current version that I often make for my son you’ll find in my Finnish book “Järkevä ketoruokavalio.”

Stracciatella has a third meaning, too: Stracciatella di bufala is a variety of Italian soft cheese that contains buffalo milk.

Anyway, as I was planning to make Stracciatella soup now, I started calculating the amounts for my experiments. First, I decided to make half a batch. As I was afraid the taste will be too bland with just broth or stock, eggs, and cheese, I decided to add some freshly-squeezed lemon juice and some black pepper to lend more flavor.

For the first experiment, I used 2 cups (470 ml) vegetable stock (as I didn’t have bone broth), 1 egg, 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese, 1 tablespoon freshly-squeezed lemon juice, and some freshly ground black pepper.

I heated the vegetable stock until boiling and added a mixture of lightly beaten egg and Parmesan. I stirred the soup until the egg and cheese mixture had formed thin strips. After that, I seasoned the soup with lemon juice and black pepper.

The flavor was good, but there was a tad too much lemon juice to my taste. Moreover, I wasn’t happy with the amount of eggs and cheese. They were clearly too little. I wanted richer and more satisfying soup.

Now, when I knew how to improve the recipe and get the result I want, I was ready to take the photos and the videos to this post. By the way, my parents hadn’t tasted the soup yet, but I was pretty sure they would like the result — the final recipe, that is.

For the final recipe, I doubled the amount of stock, increased the amount of eggs and cheese, and slightly reduced lemon juice. Now, I was thrilled with my Stracciatella soup recipe — so were my parents, who enjoyed the soup to the last drop. Mission accomplished!

Here’s the recipe for you to enjoy:

 
 

Nutrition information	In total	Per serving if 4 servings in total
Protein	27.4 g	6.9 g
Fat	33.0 g	8.3 g
Net carbs	6.2 g	1.6 g
kcal	429 kcal	107 kcal

 

Tips for variation

If you want to make the soup even more satisfying, feel free to add sliced salami, sausages, ham, cubed cooked chicken, or shrimp. All of those provide more protein and flavor.

You can replace the lemon juice with lime juice, or even orange juice. That little bit of OJ doesn’t break the carb bank unless you have to keep the amount of carbs at the absolute minimum. In that case, you can omit the lemon juice – making the soup suitable for a carnivore diet. In fact, the traditional Stracciatella soup hardly ever contains lemon juice.

General prattling

So, this week, I have mainly helped my parents in their daily routines. Moreover, my son has had his winter holiday, so I took him with me to visit my parents. We also went to our summer house for a couple of days.

But the most exciting thing was when our Ketokamu chocolate treats are finally out — and available in selected stores!

We have chocolate-covered macadamias, hazelnuts, strawberries, and raspberries. And, we also have a nut and chocolate spread called “Ketolla” (yes, you can blame me for the name!) I’ve developed all the recipes, and I have to say it’s an amazing feeling to get this stuff out to the public! These chocolate treats are not too sweet as we are trying to wean off people from unnaturally sweet flavors. Yes, all — I mean, all sugar-free treats currently on the market are still tasting terribly sweet. But not anymore! Our Ketokamu treats will provide all the rich, chocolatey taste without being overly sweet.

You might remember that I’ve told about my coming video course about keto desserts. The videos are edited and just need the final touch. The website about me – and other authors selected by the publisher for this pilot – is now launched. You’ll find it under the name Nordic Wisdom.

By the way, we are planning commercial keto pizza crusts and I was making some experiments yesterday. These nut-free crusts turned out surprisingly well: