When I got up this morning, it was cold out and we had a dusting of snow (not the terrible storm that had been predicted).
What would be better on a cold winter's night than a pot of soup. I had the ingredients for a beef vegetable soup on hand and a package of refrigerated French bread dough. Early today I started the soup and it has been simmering on the stove all day. A little while ago I added the barley and it should be ready to eat in about 1/2 hour. Then, a nice hot bowl of soup, a slice of two of bread and a glass of shiraz. It doesn't get much better than that. Maybe, I'll even light a fire.
While I was putting the barley in the soup I started thinking about my brother's adventure with barley. He was so pleased with himself that he had saved my mother's recipe for oxtail soup that he made a huge pot with plans to give me half. When he came to the part about the barley, he disagreed with the recipe's 2 tablespoons of barley. That didn't seem like enough for so much soup, so he threw in the entire box.
It tasted good, but it was more like barley stew, there was very little soup left. He didn't realize that the barley, like rice, expands and soaks up the liquid.
I don't think he ever made the soup again.
2 comments:
Because of similar experiences to your brother's, when the rice or pasta soak up too much of the delicious broth, I now do the following: I prepare the rice (barley , pasta, noodles, etc) separately, place it in its own storage bowl, and add it to my soup as I'm ready to serve. That puts an end to the mighty soup bandit!
ms/sss
Yes, the same thing happens with the noodles when I make chicken soup. It only took a couple of times to figure out I had to do them separately, lol. Duh.
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