I found this magazine last time I went to Mariano’s. I really love soup so I picked it up and went home to mark which ones I would like to try. Upon handing the magazine to “The Other” so he could begin preparing me my food he asked if it wouldn’t have been easier just to mark the soups I DIDN’T want to try. Perhaps – but that isn’t my style!
After further discussion in which I told him that every Friday we would cook a soup from the magazine and he rolled his eyes I picked the first soup – Beef Barley Soup. Probably my all time favorite soup.
I had a lot of fun shopping for the ingredients for this soup and couldn’t wait to try it. It was going to be a long soup – especially since we opted to make the stock from scratch rather than buy it in a box/can
The first step was to soften the onions and brown the bones and beef for the stock. It was a long process – especially the bones.
After that you added some more ingredients (red wine, bay leaf, etc) and let the stock simmer for 2 hours!
Once the stock was done, you strained out the onions, beef and bones, keeping the beef aside to add to the soup later. Ideally we would have let the stock cool (at least overnight if not longer) so we could de-fat it. However this was dinner and I was way to excite to care about a little extra fat or a slightly foggy broth.
The other ingredients for the soup were barley (obviously), mushrooms, carrots, onions, diced tomatoes, thyme, and the beef!
The beef was delicious after being slow cooked for 2 hours. Even with little to no seasoning it was fantastic! I can tell you I ate more than a little while prepping the other ingredients. Brutus like it as well.
Once the ingredients went it, it was another hour of simmering until the soup was ready. Luckily I filled up on all that beef during prep 🙂
The final product was delicious. My only complaint was that the beef to vegetable ratio was off (we had added all the beef since we didn’t have another use for it, but you were only supposed to add 2 cups). I know its a silly complaint – too much beef? how can that be? But here we are. I think in the future I am going to serve it over some egg noodles or mashed potatoes. Carbs will help – carbs always help!
Brutus on the other hand had no complaints except that he didn’t get enough beef. Here is him in a sleepy stupor
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