Hearty vegetable soup with barley

I don't think the internet needs another vegetable soup recipe. There are many, many versions out there. The thing is, though, sometimes I blog recipes for entirely selfish reasons.

Of course, I tell myself that others might be interested in the fact that I (i) made soup (something I do relatively infrequently, given how much I like homemade soup) and (ii) made it in this particular way.

In this case, though, it is difficult to really believe that. I am sure you've all made vegetable soup. You probably make it more often (and better!) than I do. But, selfishly, I want to record this recipe for my own reference, and the easiest way to do that is by blogging it.

Sorry.

To even things out, I thought I'd tell you about my weekend too. The only problem there is that it wasn't that interesting, even though it was enjoyable to me.

Friday night was The Big 21st Party, which will be discussed in its own post before too long.

Saturday was running, cleaning-washing-shopping and an afternoon at a football game (the Western Australia Football League, which I have attended less this year).

Sunday was washing-ironing-shopping, various To Do tasks on the computer, soup making, banana bread making (more on that sometime too), and basketball playing with Mr Bite (I'm still bad at it).

There was also gorgeous, perfect winter weather, with crisp evenings and mornings, maximum temperatures in the high teens, and dazzling sunshine.

All highly enjoyable, but probably not very exciting for you.

I can say, if nothing else, that this soup was everything I wanted it to be: jam-packed full of vegetables, dense enough to be eaten at dinner but light enough to be eaten for work lunches this week, flavoursome, nutritious, and with protein from the butter beans and barley.

You might have your own recipe, but I hope you enjoy this one too.

Heart vegetable soup with barley

Serves 4 - 6

Print recipe

Ingredients

2 cups water

3 cups vegetable stock (see note)

1 leek (white part only), roughly diced

2 carrots, roughly diced

2 stalks celery, roughly diced

~1 cup green beans, sliced

1 large parsnip, peeled and diced

2/3 cup barley, rinsed

1 tin butter beans (or canneloni beans)

1/4 tsp dried oregano

1/4 tsp dried basil

Pepper, to taste

Method

In a large saucepan, saute the leek in 1/2 cup of the water until soft. Add the 3 cups of vegetable stock with the carrots, celery and green beans, and stir over medium heat until simmering.

Add the parsnip and reduce to low - medium heat. Stir regularly for ~5 minutes. Then add the remaining 1 1/2 cups water, barley and herbs and reduce the heat to low. Simmer, covered and stirring occasionally, for ~30 minutes.

Add the butter beans and simmer, covered, for a further 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and allow to stand for at least 20 minutes or up to several hours, before reheating to serve.

Note. I like to buy prepared stock for soups as I don't trust my ability to flavour things sufficiently otherwise. You may be skilled enough to do things from scratch, or be happy to make stock up from a stock cube.

This could easily have been thinned out with an additional cup of water or stock, and if you have a sufficiently large pan you may wish to do that.

As it was, I filled my largest saucepan to the brim and couldn't have added anything extra. I also quite liked the density of this, and of course it is easy enough to thin soup out later by adding water to an individual serve if desired.

The only downside of this soup is that you really do need to like barley to enjoy it. Regrettably for Mr Bite, I only discovered on serving it that he does not. At all. I probably could have predicted this (and on reflection, when I made this barly risotto, I didn't serve it to him), so I can only apologise again for his impromptu scrambled egg sandwich dinner!

Do you have a favourite soup recipe? And what did you get up to this weekend?

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