Recipe Notes: Quick Beef and Barley Soup

27 February 2018

Recipe from All Time Best Soups, America's Test Kitchen, 2016, p. 18.

Once again I dove into the soup book that I got last Christmas for a new recipe to try. This time I chose a "quick" beef and barley soup. It looked to be easy to make, consistent with the "quick" in its title. Homemade soup is a great cold-weather entrée and I was hoping this one would be no exception.

I had a bag of pearl barley in the freezer. I wasn't sure if this was the same as "quick" barley, so I didn't look too hard for the latter in the supermarket. The recipe specifies sirloin steak tips for the beef component with a note that this is sometimes called "flap meat". I purchased 1.6 lbs of "flap meet" at Whole Foods; I hoped this was the right stuff. To start making the soup, carrots and onion were cooked in olive oil in a Dutch oven. Once the vegetables were softened, fresh thyme, dried porcini mushrooms, garlic, and tomato paste were added and cooked for 30 seconds. Beef broth, chicken broth, barley, and soy sauce were added and the mixture simmered until the barley was tender. According to the recipe this should have taken about 15 minutes, but for me this took about an hour and I had to add a cup of water due to the extra simmering time. Apparently pearl barley is not "quick-cooking"! In a skillet the beef, having been cut into ½-inch pieces and seasoned, was browned and then added to the Dutch oven once the barley was tender.  Even with the a slower-cooking barley, the soup was ready about two hours after preparations began. 

The result was a soup that we enjoyed as the main course for several meals. It had a nice beefy/umami flavor with a good consistency and tender, flavorful meat. For our first dinner with this soup we served it with sourdough crustini (fancy word for toast) and some red wine for a simple and satisfying dinner. This is a soup to make again, with quick barley or barley that takes a little longer to cook.