Vegetable Barley Soup

Hearty and healthy, comforting and tasty, and easy to make too, this vegetable barley soup has it all going on. The only hard part about this soup recipe is waiting for hours as it slow-cooks to perfection. The aroma will be pretty hard to resist, but do your best, and your patience will be rewarded.

And once you do tuck in to this vegetable barley soup, you’ll love the fact that it covers so many of those food groups. Add in some beans or chicken and you’ll have a true meal in a bowl, with plenty of veggies for nutrition and enough carbs and calories to satisfy your hunger. Also, not counting any added proteins, this is a fat-free soup, so from the nutrition angle, it’s a true winner.

Vegetable Barley Soup Ingredients

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• Sweet potato: You’ll need one large sweet potato (or two small ones), peeled and cubed.
• Baby carrots: The recipe calls for 1-1/2 cups of fresh baby carrots, halved, but of course you can chop regular carrots down to size if need be.
• Cut green beans: Frozen green beans work well here, with canned green beans being an acceptable fallback. And of course fresh green beans are even better.
• Frozen corn: Again, canned corn works as a fallback, but frozen corn has a better consistency.
• Celery ribs: Make sure the celery ribs are thinly sliced so they distribute evenly.
• Onion: One small yellow onion, well chopped, goes a long way. A half of a larger onion is fine too.
• Green pepper: Aim for 1/2 cup of chopped green pepper, with a red, yellow or orange pepper a fine stand-in.
• Garlic cloves: Mince those garlic cloves well so they can release all their flavor.
• Water: We don’t always mention water in recipes, but in this case, make sure to be precise with the 6 cups.
• Vegetable broth: If you’re not concerned with keeping the soup vegetarian, then chicken broth works well too.
• Medium pearl barley: A cup of barley goes a long way, as it fluffs up in size after taking on liquid.
• Bay leaf: Don’t forget to use a bay leaf, and don’t forget to fetch it back out before serving, either.
• Fennel seed: The crushed fennel seed is potent in flavor, so measure carefully.
• Italian diced tomatoes: Don’t pour off the liquid that comes in these canned tomatoes, as you want it to go into the soup.

Directions

Step 1: Combine all the ingredients, minus the tomatoes

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In a 5-quart slow cooker, combine the sweet potato, carrots, green beans, corn, celery, onion, green pepper and garlic, and stir to combine them. Pour in the water, broth and barley, then add the bay leaf and seasonings. Cover the slow cooker and cook the soup on low until the barley and vegetables are tender, 8 to 10 hours.

Step 2: Add the tomatoes and heat through

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Once the slow-cooking time has elapsed, stir in the canned tomatoes, including their liquid, then switch the slow cooker to high heat to warm the soup evenly. Let it cook for 10 to 20 minutes, then fish out the bay leaf and serve the soup.

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Vegetable Barley Soup Variations

• Add in some beans: While hearty and nutritious, this soup is lacking in protein. That can easily be remedied with the addition of beans, ideally white beans like cannellinis or great northern beans. Stir these beans, well rinsed, into the soup when there is about an hour of slow-cooking time left.
• Make it a chicken soup: We talked about chicken broth, but how about chicken soup? Adding pieces of raw chicken breast or thigh at the start of the cooking adds flavor and protein. Just shred the meat with two forks before serving what will now be barley vegetable chicken soup.
• Skip the green beans: The one divisive ingredient in this soup is green beans. You can by all means leave them out if you don’t like them, and consider compensating by adding more pepper or by adding chopped kale when you stir in the tomatoes.

How to Store Vegetable Barley Soup

This soup will keep well in the fridge for three to four days, provided you seal it in airtight bags or in an airtight container. When you reheat it, ideally use a pot on the stove and add a bit more broth, but of course you can also zap portions in the microwave.

Can you freeze barley vegetable soup?

While the consistency of the sweet potatoes might not be ideal after a freeze, this soup will still taste great after being frozen, and it can be safely stored as such for three to four months. Thaw it in the fridge overnight and heat it up in a pot.

Vegetable Barley Soup Tips

Is barley a healthy grain?

Barley is very healthy, in fact. It is packed with vitamins and minerals, like vitamin B1, copper and magnesium, and it’s a great source of fiber. It’s also rich in antioxidants.

What should I serve with vegetable barley soup?

If you added beans or chicken to beef up this vegetable barley soup recipe, then this really is a meal in a bowl all by itself, but if you’re looking for great pairing ideas, savory sausages, fried chicken or a steak work well, as does a sourdough or Irish soda bread loaf.

Can I make this soup without a slow cooker?

By all means: It’s slow cooking that’s needed, not a slow cooker, per se. You can use a large stockpot or Dutch oven set over a burner at low heat, just be sure to gently stir the soup once an hour if you’re cooking it this way.