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Recipe: Mushroom-Barley Soup 7 January 2007 6:42 pm

Posted by Tracy in : cooking,recipes,restaurants,soup,sundance,vegan,vegetarian , trackback

Mushroom-Barley Soup

I learned this recipe from Lee and Eitan Zucker of The LocoMotive Restaurant in Eugene, Oregon, which closed its doors in December 2004 (I still miss them something fierce, but you can read more about that here). Great hearty winter fare, this soup was modestly described on The LocoMotive’s menu as “at least a 9 on the comfort food scale”; it certainly got rave reviews whenever I made it at Sundance. As you can see, the ingredients list is pretty basic: the cremini mushrooms are the only remotely fancy ingredient, and even those can be replaced by regular white button mushrooms. The recipe is simple, too; the only trick is using the mushroom stems to make a very simple stock that adds great flavor. As far as I can tell, what makes this soup so great is patience and time, which allow all the ingredients to love each other into complete deliciousness.

What You Need (Ingredients and Equipment)

What You Do

  1. Cook mushroom stems in 6-8 cups water for at least one hour to make broth. (You can do the rest of your vegetable prep while you wait.) After 60-90 minutes, when the liquid looks like weak tea, strain out the stems or purée them into the broth using a blender or food processor. (Please don’t burn yourself with the hot liquid; my notebook comments on this recipe says “You will overflow the food processor if you don’t watch out, so be careful, fool.”)
  2. Heat the oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot. Add mushrooms, carrots, celery, onion, and barley, and cook, stirring occasionally, over medium heat until the vegetables start to brown (at least 15-20 minutes, or plenty of time in which to finish your stock).
  3. Gradually mix in broth, salt and pepper. Bring soup to a boil, stirring frequently.
  4. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook until the barley is tender and the soup is nice and thick, 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the barley. Stir occasionally; towards the end, you may need to stir frequently as the soup thickens and tries to stick to the bottom of the pan. Add water as needed to adjust the soup to your desired thickness (barley porridge is delicious, but it’s not what we’re after here).
  5. Mix in parsley and correct seasoning to taste with salt and pepper.

That’s it: four to six servings of really delicious soup, maybe eight if accompanied by salad and crusty bread. I’m making this for dinner tonight, and it should be just about ready now. Mmmmm.