Bowlfuls of Beef and Barley

Beef and barley soup, served with sourdough garlic bread and red wine. Apple crisp for dessert!

Modifications: only a pinch of salt because of the broths; 2 cloves garlic; several sprigs of fresh thyme; no parsley; started recipe in a pan and then finished it in the slow cooker.

Other recipes suggested potatoes and tomatoes, but I did not add them. I didn't want two starches and I was curious about how the barley would shine on its own. I also wanted the soup to have more of a beef taste then a tomato one.

Preparation: straightforward but probably took 30 minutes before everything was finally in the slow cooker. I did steps 1-3 in a pan on the stove-top, then added everything to the slow cooker pot (I'm sure there's a name for that thing...) and brought it to a boil on the stove-top (with a rack under the slow cooker pot). Once I got a boil, I removed the pot from the stove-top, plunked it in the slow cooker base and set it on "high" for 1.5 hours.

Verdict: Yum! This was a hearty, filling, and tasty soup. The time required for slow cooking/simmering filled our place with a delicious smell, too. The recipe did make eight servings, so we had left-overs. I found there was a bit of a gravy taste in the left-overs, but it wasn't too strong.

The barley swelled more than I thought it would, and the soup was quite full of barley with just 1/2 cup used in the recipe. I was not sure about all the broth and water, but the mushrooms absorbed some of the liquid. All the broth resulted in a bit too much salt, so I might avoid even a pinch of salt next time, and use very little in dusting the meat.