Beef Barley Soup seems to have never gotten really gotten it’s due as a world-class soup. This recipe starts with a little leftover pot roast and gives real-deal scratch vibes. Deep, rich flavor from a doctored-up broth helps, but it’s a cup or two of leftover pot roast and a touch of gravy or drippings that gives it a lusciousness that you’ll never get from the back of the box recipe.
Beef Barley Soup
In this recipe, we’re going to make use of leftover pot roast. Best of all, we take a few minutes to use every scrap from the vegetables in the soup to give your boxed, powdered, or paste beef bouillon taste like real deal scratch from bones stock. I have a few other tricks and tips below, too.
About Beef Barley Soup:
Beef barley soup is hearty, cozy comfort food made with tender chunks of beef, nutty barley, and vegetables in a rich, savory broth. It’s the kind of soup that feels warming and substantial without being heavy. It’s economic, simple, rustic, and perfect for a chilly day.
In the past, soups like this were made from bones and scrap cuts like ox tails or short ribs, and time was a key ingredient. Those cuts? No longer cheap and often not available, and who has the time to gently simmer for hours? Some things, like scratch stock is hard to duplicate, but we’re gonna get close!
Pot Roast Carbonnade
Key Takeaways in this Recipe:
- Use leftovers, along with a little of the gravy or drippings
- Doctor up the broth so it tastes more like scratch stock. There are several ways to do this, below.
- Cook the barley separately so it’s perfectly al dente, allowing the flavors of the beef and veggies to shine through.
Making Beef Barley Soup:
The first of my “tricks” is to use leftover pot roast, especially Pot Roast Carbonnade. The meat is already infused with flavor, so there’s no need for expensive ox-tails, short ribs, or flanken for flavor. Below are a few more tricks, and you may use all or any as you see fit and time allows:
- If you’re using pot roast, use some of the drippings or just a little gravy from the pot roast to enrich the broth. Start with a little, taste, add a little more…
- If starting from store-bought broth, caramelize vegetable scraps (from the veggies you’ll be using in the soup) and use them to infuse the broth with flavor. Strain them out. That helps to lose the “commercial” or “canned” taste.
- Simmer dried Porcini or Shitake mushrooms, one of my “Stealth” ingredients, in the broth for a deep, rich taste. They’re pricey but worth it. If not, finely dice button mushrooms and cook until deeply browned, just like I do with my Classic Vegetable Soup.
- Sneak a packet of gelatin in the soup to simmer away during the final stages…it adds just a hint of body that’s missing in a store-bought broth. After all, gelatin is made from bones and such.
About the Barley:
Perfectly cooked barley has great texture and just a bit of chew, but when cooked in the soup, it releases a lot of starch, leaving the flavor of the soup faded and muddy. And the barley can become strangely bloated.
Cook the barley by itself and add it to the soup – this is no starchy mess with strange, bloated barley. It’s perfectly cooked al dente, just a bit chewy and delicious. (Make extra barley and toss it in the freezer for a great time saver.)
What to Serve Beef Barley Soup With:
Serve this hearty Beef Barley Soup with crackers or, even better, with hunks of bread. I gotta give a shout-out to my Crusty Bread, easy overnight and no-knead. Now, you’ve got a meal!
A simple green salad and a biscuit, like these easy Cheddar Bay Biscuits or these Drop Biscuits, would be great, too. A grilled cheese, preferably one made on good bread with something like Provolone (it will stand up to the soup in a good way), would be great.
Saving Money on Beef Barley Soup:
This is a go-to recipe when I have leftover pot roast. I’m actually a bit stingy about setting a bit aside, so it’s not all gobbled up by a gluttonous family member (you know who you are!) Not only do I love this Beef Barley Soup, but I also recognize that a great way to work some fabulous frugality into the budget is to use a more expensive protein in more than one meal.
The first meal, heavy on the meat, can be quite pricey if it’s all eaten up – but if you add a second meal (like this huge pot of soup – I’ll serve for dinner the first night and divide it into individual servings to freeze for lunches) into the equation, then all of a sudden you can “cost average” the meals.
I call this “dividing and conquering.” The same holds true with the “healthiness” of the meal. A huge pot roast with “mashed and a side” might be a bit on the heavy side – if your next meal is chock full of vegetables, like this soup, you’ve just found a bit of balance, both health-wise and money-wise.
Beef Barley Soup
Beef Barley Soup
- Yield: 12 servings 1x
Ingredients
Doctored up Broth:
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- scraps from vegetables used in the soup
- scant teaspoon sugar
- 1 onion, diced
- 3 to 4 dried mushrooms, rinsed, then soaked in very hot water for several minutes or 8 ounces fresh finely diced
- 3 whole cloves
- Parsley sprigs or stems, optional
- 6 cups of beef broth, canned or boxed
- 4 cups water, divided (3 plus 1)
Beef & Barley Soup:
- 1 packet of gelatin
- 6 carrots, peeled and diced
- 6 stalks celery, diced
- 2 to 3 cups chopped cabbage
- small can of crushed tomatoes (optional)
- 2 to 3 cups of cooked barley (1 cup dry = 3 1/2 cups cooked)
- 1 to 2 cups of leftover pot roast
- salt and pepper to taste
- dash of red wine vinegar
Instructions
Doctored Up Broth:
Add olive oil to Dutch oven and when heated through, add vegetable scraps, sugar, dried mushrooms or diced fresh mushrooms, and onion. Cover and adjust heat to medium, stirring now and then, until the vegetables just begin to caramelize, about 15 to 20 minutes. Add just a little water if in danger of burning. Remove lid, stir until lightly browned. Add cloves, parsley sprigs, broth, and three cups of water. Cover and simmer at least 20 minutes and up to 1 1/2 hours.
Strain broth into a bowl, pressing on vegetables. Use remaining cup of water to pour through the vegetables in the strainer (still over the bowl) and allow to drain for several minutes.
If desired, before straining, the dried mushrooms, which will be floating on the top of the broth may be removed, finely chopped, and added to the soup. The longer the broth simmers, the less flavor will be left in the mushrooms, so taste one to see if this would be worthwhile.
Wipe the Dutch oven clean of debris.
Beef & Barley Soup:
Bring the broth to a simmer in the Dutch oven, add gelatin, carrots, and celery. Simmer about 10 minutes. Add cabbage and tomatoes if using. Simmer another five minutes. Add cooked barley and simmer about five to 10 minutes until heated through and vegetables are at the desired stage of tenderness.
Check for consistency. Add a bit more beef broth or water if needed or desired for taste. Adjust seasonings. Add a dash of red wine vinegar if the soup needs any “perking up.”
Note on broth:
- I generally buy 2 boxes of beef broth, 4 cups each. In this instance, I’d already used about a cup of the broth in the pot roast, Pot Roast Carbonnade. The rest (3 cups from the partial box and 3 cups from the new box) went in the soup, leaving one cup. I hold back last cup back until the end, just in case I need it.
- Beef broths vary widely in strength, flavor, and saltiness, so this allows me to hedge my bet here. I don’t wish to overwhelm the soup with a very strong broth, but I don’t want it to be dull and lacking either.
- The barley can be a variable, too; depending on how well-cooked, it may absorb more broth than expected. It’s nice to have a bit of broth on the side in case you wish to add.
Nutrition: Based on a cup of Beef Barley Soup: Calories 178; Total Fat 7 g 10 %; Saturated Fat 2 g 9 %; Monounsaturated Fat 3 g; Polyunsaturated Fat 0 g; Trans Fat 0 g; Cholesterol 19 mg 6 %; Sodium 86 mg 4 %; Potassium 249 mg 7 %; Total Carbohydrate 20 g 7 %; Dietary Fiber 4 g 16 %; Sugars 4 g; Protein 10 g 20 %; Vitamin A 77 %; Vitamin C 19 %; Calcium 3 %; Iron 8 %
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