Vegetables and barley soup
- Preparation 40 min
- Cooking 1 h
- Servings 15
- Freezing Absolutely
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🍲 My mother’s soup, and the one thing she never left out
This one is my mother’s recipe. She always put in herbes salées du Bas-du-Fleuve, the salted herbs from the Lower St. Lawrence that every Quebec grandmother kept in a jar in the fridge, and that single tablespoon is still what pulls the whole pot together. I’ve adjusted the recipe a little over the years. Nothing dramatic, just enough that it’s mine too now. Turnip, carrot, celery, Spanish onion, and pearl barley.
🥄 Pot barley or pearl barley?
Pearl barley is polished: the hull and part of the bran are gone. It cooks in about 30 minutes and it gives off a lot of starch, which is exactly what you want here. That starch is what thickens the broth right in the pot instead of leaving you with vegetables floating in water.
Pot barley, sold in a lot of stores as hulled barley, is the whole grain. More fibre, more chew, 60 to 90 minutes of cooking. It works, but cook it separately and stir it in at the end or everything else in the pot turns to mush while you wait.
One thing to be straight about: I make this with chicken broth. There’s no meat in the soup itself, so if you swap in vegetable broth you get a completely meatless bowl and you lose nothing. Same pot, same barley, same thirty minutes.
🥖 A cheese board next to the bowl
My favourite way to serve it: a big crusty loaf, lightly toasted, brie, a herbed cream cheese, some cured sausage. Calabrese or genoa salami. The guys at home fight over the last piece of bread dipped in the broth. Put my cheesy garlic bread on the side and finish with my apple crisp, and that’s a full fall dinner without anybody breaking a sweat.
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🥄 Pot barley vs pearl barley, and why it matters here
Pearl barley has been polished, so the hull and some of the bran are gone. Thirty minutes of cooking, lots of starch, and that starch is the whole point of this soup: it thickens the broth from the inside while the grain cooks. That’s what separates this from a thin vegetable soup with something floating in it.
Pot barley is the same grain with only the inedible outer hull removed, which is why a lot of stores label it hulled barley. It’s chewier, higher in fibre, and it needs 60 to 90 minutes. Perfectly good soup, different timing. If you’re using pot barley, cook it on its own in salted water and add it at the end, otherwise your carrots are gone long before the grain is ready.
Short version: pearl barley for a thick broth and a weeknight, pot barley for more bite and more patience.
💧 About the 30 minute soak
It’s on the bag. That’s the honest answer. I do it because the package says to, not because I have some technique to sell you. It softens the grain a little and rinses off the loose surface starch. Skip it and your soup will still be good.
🍗 Chicken broth, and how to make it meatless
I use chicken broth, 8 cups of it. There is no meat in the soup itself, so swapping in an equal amount of vegetable broth gives you a completely meatless bowl without changing anything else. Nothing about the barley, the timing or the texture shifts.
🥔 No potato in here, and that’s on purpose
Half the old fashioned vegetable barley soups you’ll find are built on potato. Mine isn’t. The barley already does the starch job, and a potato on top of it turns the whole thing pasty by day two. Turnip, carrot, celery, onion. That’s the base my mother used and I never saw a reason to touch it.
🥬 Turnip or rutabaga?
Either one, genuinely. They’re close cousins and it’s not worth losing sleep over. The small white turnip is milder and finer, the waxed yellow rutabaga leans sweeter and holds up better in a long simmer. I’m fairly sure what I buy is rutabaga.
🌿 Herbes salées, the ingredient nobody else uses
Chives, parsley, savoury, carrot and a lot of salt, packed in a jar. It’s a Quebec pantry staple and it’s the reason this soup doesn’t taste like every other barley soup on the internet. One tablespoon for the whole pot.
It is aggressively salty though. Pepper at the start, taste at the very end, and only then decide whether it needs salt at all.
❄️ It thickens overnight, and that’s normal
Three to four days in the fridge, three months in the freezer, laid flat in bags. Barley keeps drinking liquid even cold, so the next day you’re looking at something closer to a stew. Splash in water or broth as you reheat and it comes right back.
✅ What to serve with vegetable barley soup
A big crusty loaf, lightly toasted, with brie, a herbed cream cheese and some cured sausage. Calabrese or genoa. That’s the board at our house and it turns a bowl of soup into supper.
If you want to build it out, my cheesy garlic bread next to the bowl is the match, my tomato and caramelized fennel bruschetta makes a starter that stands on its own, and my apple crisp closes it. For the other vegetable soup in the house, the one built on pasta instead of grain, go to my vegetable minestrone soup. And if you want the opposite technique, my ground beef, pearl couscous and vegetables soup cooks its grain separately on purpose, because pearl couscous releases so much starch it would turn the broth into porridge.
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Ingredients
- 1 medium Spanish onion, finely chopped
- Olive oil
- 3 celery stalks with leaves, sliced
- 2 large carrots, cut into rounds
- 2 small turnips, cubed (rutabaga works just as well)
- 1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) dried thyme
- 1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) dried rosemary
- 1 tbsp (15 ml) herbes salées (Quebec salted herbs)
- 1 can (796 ml) of Italian-seasoned diced tomatoes
- 8 cups (2 L) chicken broth
- 3/4 cup (180 ml) pearl barley
- Salt and pepper to taste
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Preparation
- Soak the barley in cold water for 30 minutes. Rinse, drain and set aside.
- In a large pot over medium heat, heat a generous drizzle of oil and add the onion. Cook, stirring, for 5 minutes.
- Add the remaining vegetables, the spices and the herbes salées, then mix well. Season with pepper to taste (careful, herbes salées already contain salt!). Cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Add a little olive oil if needed.
- Add the chicken broth and diced tomatoes and mix everything together. Bring to a boil then reduce to medium heat. Simmer for 15 minutes.
- Add the barley and simmer for 30 minutes or until the vegetables are tender!
Not pearl barley. It goes straight into the simmering broth and cooks there for about 30 minutes, and you actually want it that way: the starch it releases is what thickens the soup. Pot barley, also sold as hulled barley, is the exception. It needs 60 to 90 minutes, so cook it separately and stir it in at the end.
Pearl barley is polished, so the hull and part of the bran are gone. It cooks fast, around 30 minutes, and gives off plenty of starch. Pot barley keeps almost the whole grain: more fibre, more chew, and 60 to 90 minutes of cooking. For soup, pearl barley thickens the broth and pot barley keeps it clearer with a firmer bite. This recipe is written for pearl barley.
I use chicken broth, 8 cups for the pot, and it gives the roundest result with the tomatoes. There’s no meat in the soup itself, so if you replace it with the same amount of vegetable broth you end up with a completely meatless bowl and nothing else about the recipe changes. Whatever you pick, go low sodium: the herbes salées bring a lot of salt on their own.
Because the barley is already the starch. A lot of old fashioned versions lean on potato to thicken things, but here the grain does that job on its own, and adding potato on top makes the leftovers pasty. If you want it anyway, use one waxy potato cubed small and add it with the broth.
A crusty loaf lightly toasted, brie, a herbed cream cheese and cured sausage on a board in the middle of the table. For a bigger meal, my cheesy garlic bread on the side, my tomato and caramelized fennel bruschetta to start and my apple crisp for dessert.
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