Pearl barley is a whole polished grain of barley. It contains many useful substances, including proteins and starches. Not only cereals are prepared from it, but also excellent soups that will perfectly fit into any meal.
It is recommended to wash the barley and cook it in a pan before cooking, then it will be much tastier. Let's look at a few recipes for how to make barley soup. It should be said that the first dishes with this cereal are very different, for example, pickle, kharcho soup, pea, fish or mushroom soup.
Meat soup
Ingredients: three hundred grams of beef meat, three cloves of garlic, fifty grams of parsnip and celery, one each carrot, onion and potato, one spoonful of tomato paste, three pickled cucumbers, one spoonful of butter, salt and spices.
Barley meat soup is prepared as follows:
The meat is cleaned of films, bones and tendons and cut into small pieces, which are sent to one liter of boiling water and boiled over low heat. In this case, it is necessary to periodically remove foam from the broth. Two bay leaves, salt and pepper are added there.
After half an hour, add chopped parsnip and celery, garlic, diced carrots and potatoes and cook for another twenty minutes. After time, bay leaf is taken from the broth, the cereal is added and cooked for about an hour.
While the pearl barley soup is being cooked, the onions are cut and fried in oil, tomato paste, three tablespoons of broth are added and stewed for ten minutes. The cucumbers are grated, added to the tomato and continue to simmer another fifteen minutes. Then everything is transferred to a pot with soup and boil it for ten minutes. The finished dish is seasoned with fresh herbs.
Barley fish soup
Ingredients: two hundred and fifty grams of fish (cod, wild boar, hake or toothfish), one carrot, twenty grams of butter, two onions, one and a half liters of broth or water, pearl barley, salt and spices.
Porridge is cooked from pearl barley, adding butter during cooking. The fish is cleaned, cut into pieces and boiled, adding salt, onion, roots and spices to the water. The resulting broth is filtered, pearl barley porridge is put in it and brought to a boil.
When serving, put a piece of fish in the soup and sprinkle it with herbs.
Mushroom soup with barley
Ingredients: four feathers of green onions, one carrot, one onion, two potatoes, fifty grams of dried mushrooms, half a glass of pearl barley, one tablespoon of vegetable oil, two tablespoons of butter, salt and spices.
Pearl barley is washed and thrown into a colander, which is installed over boiling water in a pan and covered with a lid. Thus, the cereal is steamed for half an hour.
Mushrooms are washed, laid in a bowl, poured with two glasses of boiling water and left for fifteen minutes. After that, they are thrown into a colander, cut into strips and left. Filter the mushroom infusion, bring to a boil, add pearl barley to it and cook for twenty minutes.
The vegetables are peeled and diced, then added to the barley soup and boiled for ten minutes.
Meanwhile, oil (vegetable and cream) is heated in a pan, fried onions and carrots, add mushrooms and continue cooking for five minutes. After that, everything is added to the soup and boiled for several minutes. Cover the finished dish and let it brew for ten minutes. Serve it, after sprinkling with chopped green onions.
Thus, pearl barley soup is not only hearty, but also a tasty and healthy dish. It contains a large amount of nutrients necessary for the life of the body. You should only remember one rule when cooking the first dishes of this cereal. So, since barley requires a long cooking time, it must first be soaked in water and only cook the field.