Sunday Gravy with yeah right: For Gumbygirl. Beef and Barley Soup!

Welcome back friends.

Good to have you here!

The March Madness dealie is in full swing so there will be television options this weekend and for the next several weekends.

/cracks open a 40 of Alabama’s finest for UAB

//pours out most of it

Did you come back to find out what we’re going to do with the delicious beefy stew-like substance we made last week?

Well shit! I’m honored!

Lucky too because that is EXACTLY what we will be doing today.

This isn’t going to be your run-of-the-mill Sunday Gravy episode either. Something about this recipe, well… it changed me. Fundamentally changed me. Like on the fucking molecular level and shit, it changed me.

I’ll get to that in a moment but just know it’s true before we get to the good stuff.

Today we’re making beef with barley soup!

A few weeks back in the comment section our very own Gumbygirl mentioned that she was making beef and barley soup. I asked her how she made her version and she shared. I also mentioned that I would give that a shot during the upcoming season of Sunday Gravy.

And here we are.

Again, I do take requests and often find inspiration from you wonderful folks.

I imagine most everyone here was exposed to a variety of Campbell’s soups while growing up. Regular goddamn right of passage here in the US. I know I certainly was. I was fine with most of them, even ate the vegetable soup that had the little letters and numbers and shit in it.

Remember that one?

Sure there was chicken noodle, a favorite for when staying home with a cold or flu, tomato was always tasty with a grilled cheese sandwich too.

My two favorites were bean with bacon, which we have made before…

and this one; Beef and barley. I was a big fan of this soup.

When first leaving home at the tender age of 19-20 and striking out on my own, there was always a can or two of this in my mostly empty kitchen cupboard. While I was armed with my basic but still fairly rudimentary arsenal of cooking knowledge this soup helped fill a void.

On those long bouts early in the working career where you hoped to have enough food on hand to survive until the next payday this shit was a lifesaver. You could stretch your buck a little further by making a batch of rice and pouring the soup on top.

Yes. I did.

As you get older and develop your chef skills to a much higher level you leave some of the old staples behind. It may also be that the soup had a terrifying amount of sodium in it.

While it served as a staple growing up and a good way to stretch the food dollar when you moved out on your own, I had never made it from scratch.

Until today.

Shall we?

Beef and Barley Soup!

recipe inspired by cookingclassy.com

SOME chuck roast cut in to cubes*

1 leftover beef bone – if you have one

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 cup chopped carrots (about 2-3)

1 cup chopped celery (about 2 ribs)

1 cup chopped yellow onion (1 large)

1 Tbsp tomato paste

4 cloves minced garlic

1 (32 oz) carton beef broth

1 Tbsp low-sodium soy sauce

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

2 tsp minced fresh rosemary

2 tsp minced fresh thyme

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2/3 to 1 cup pearl barley

*The “SOME” beef in the recipe is because we ate most of it in the wonderful yet punishing Number 12 burrito from last week.

As with many quality soups and stocks this one begins with the usual suspects.

This is basically the building block of almost any good soup out there. Our old friend the mire poix.

What’s different today is the size of the cut. We actually want to leave the chunks bigger today so they are identifiable when the soup is finished cooking.

Give the carrots a slice, not too thin and not too thick.

Onions next. OK to leave them a little chunky. If you look closely you’ll see I already cut up the celery and dumped the onion on top.

Then we get them in the pot for a good sweat. I go about 10 minutes on this step.

Add in the tomato paste and garlic and cook until just aromatic.

This should look like a familiar step from last week.

I had the foresight to stash this little beauty in the freezer. It’s from my New Years rib roast.

Not a ton of meat on there, you’re right. It will impart flavor from the bone though and the marrow will help to give us a gelatinous boost.

Get the beef stock into the pan.

We’re going to simmer the beef bone, vegetables, herbs, soy sauce, Worchestershire and seasonings for about a half hour. This is key to reaching the right texture for the veggies. 

While the stock simmers take out what’s left of our roast beef from last weeks recipe. Cut it into bits.

Yeah. Sure could have saved a bit more beef. Blame it on the burrito. Go ahead and add the beef to the soup and let simmer for about 15 minutes or so.

Next to the grains!

Pearl barley! Back a few years ago you could find this at your local grocery store – maybe some of you still can – it’s on the same shelf as the rice and dried beans. I did not have any luck at my two regular stores though.

Also available at Amazon.

Add the barley and cook until the barley is tender and the soup has coalesced. This depends entirely on how firm you want the texture of the barley. I like mine with a slight chew but not too hard. It was about an hour of additional cook time.

Shit! Don’t just stand there! Grab yourself a bowl!

It’s beef forward, despite actually needing, you know, more meat. The vegetables marry perfectly with the stock. The herbs are bright and right on the top of the profile. Fresh thyme and rosemary really make this one sing. The barley is filling, rich and paired with the beef component, they really play well together.

If you had some nice crusty bread this would be a great application here.

Delightful!

“But yeah right?” you may be asking.

“What about that life altering molecular level bullshit you were spouting earlier? The fuck man?”

I was getting to that.

I ate a couple of bowls of this soup and refrigerated the rest for later. Having made this on a Sunday night I figured I would take some to work the following week to have for my dinner.

So I did.

People? This shit the next day? Or the day after that?

It got incrementally better EACH SUBSEQUENT DAY!

My god. As good as this was on the first day there was NO comparison to the following days. None.

About Wednesday of the next week I realized that shit, there really isn’t that much meat in this is there? And it’s still goddamn delicious!

Hey?!?

Reader. Want to know what I did? For reals?

The next week I made the soup again. WITHOUT MEAT! Then took it to work every day the following week for my dinner. It’s delicious, satisfying and a beautiful change of pace from my old weekly meals.

This soup turned me…VEGETARIAN!

I shit you not.

Without giving too much away and fucking up the timeline of upcoming episodes of Sunday Gravy I have now not had a single bite of meat FOR 4 WEEKS!

Truth!

Hope that doesn’t freak you out or anything but it’s now a full on social experiment. I have an end date to this madness but I want to play it out.

Does this mean you’ll be reading (gulp) vegetarian recipes over the next several episodes?

It does.

And Dear Brother King Hippo? Have I got a couple of recipes that will blow YOUR damn mind.

Your fear is understandable. “Oh fuck!” I can hear you already.

“He’s gonna talk about how good he feels now” – I feel fantastic.

“Then he’ll probably talk about all of the weight he’s lost.”  – About 10 pounds in fact.

“What if we lost him to THEM for good?”

Do you really think that I, ME, MOTHERFUCKING yeah right will never eat a goddamn steak again?

Fuck if I won’t.

The way I see this playing out, when I do finish my stretch of being all vegetarian I can see myself changing my Monday-Friday work meals to possibly being all vegetarian then in a few months when I have my annual physical I want to see the end results. Which would still allow me to eat whatever the fuck I wanted on the weekends!

Real talk, I take two blood pressure meds and one for cholesterol. As of my last check-up there was talk about possibly getting to the point where I wouldn’t need them.

I would like that.

A lot.

I’ll keep you all informed as I go.

Going to be honest now, it’s going to be really hard to not be a “preachy vegetarian type” because this shit is a revelation. I had no fucking idea just how delicious this would be. I always took it as a form of self-sacrifice and a last resort after getting bad news from the doctor.

It’s not like that at all. It’s absolutely doable and incredibly delicious.

Got a fun one for you next week that is certainly going to be in the regular work-week rotation from here forward.

Stop by to find out all about it next week.

I promise it won’t hurt.

Have a great rest of your Sunday.

PEACE!