Soak the barley for the soup and cook for 1 hour.
How to cook barley in soup
Proportions of barley – for each liter of a saucepan, take 1,5-2 tablespoons of cereal: for example, take 5-6 tablespoons of cereal in a 9-liter saucepan of soup. Keep in mind that the barley continues to swell even after the end of cooking, and from the moment of soaking to serving in the soup, it increases by about 5-7 times.
For any soup, the barley must be soaked in cold water for at least 6 hours, then in the soup it will be soft and give the broth a pleasant consistency. Otherwise, the soup will be more starchy, and the cereals in the soup will be more grainy and less silky.
You can cook barley immediately in a soup pan, adding it 1 hour before the soup is generally ready.
If the soup is cooked and the pearl barley is too swollen, drain the excess with a slotted spoon, it can be frozen and used in the future.
How to quickly soak barley for soup
1. Pour water into a saucepan – a couple of glasses so that the pearl barley is steamed.
2. Wash the barley in a sieve until clear water.
3. Place the sieve on top of the pan, cover with a lid, stir every 10 minutes.
4. Keep so for 30 minutes, then cook in the soup for 1,5 hours.
Delicious facts
For optimal consumption of time and labor, barley is put to soak together with defrosting of the soup meat. To preserve the maximum nutritional properties, meat is thawed naturally, and this takes 4-5 hours – about the same as barley is needed for soaking.
If a mushroom soup is prepared from dried mushrooms, then the approach is generally the same – the dried mushrooms must be soaked for several hours, and the pearl barley can also be soaked at this stage.
For the pickle, it is all the more important to soak the barley, since this soup is cooked with a high salt content, and salt makes the barley hard.