Barley Soup with Greens
It's spring on the calendar but it's not spring outside. I want veggies, I want greens, I want freshness. But I also need comfort food. So, this week I turned to an old favorite, this barley soup from Bon Appetit.
It has SO many greens and good things, but is technically a barley soup. Best of both worlds!
Planning!
I essentially hoped this could be the lowest key soup of all time, but I wanted to give it as much flavor as possible. Rather than use canned vegetable stock (I don't freeze veggie stock of my own), I planned to lean on the jar of Better than Bouillon in my fridge (it is SO good). I wouldn't skimp on the onion carmelization, and I knew it would take forever to break down all the greens, but other than that this would be delightfully hands off. So I gave myself a two hour time limit between this and the pizzas that I made (to use up the fennel bulb I'd end up with in order to have the fennel fronds for this soup). I would start with the (pizza dough and) barley, and do everything else in between.
Big note: I couldn't find any ricotta salata at the store this week, and feta can be a bit of a wild card for me, so I skipped the cheese. This soup is absolutely fantastic with the cheese, but I was just as happy to miss it this time around because between you and me, I've added a few too many ell-bees for comfort during this tech/preview period, and a giant bucket of soup with a low calorie count isn't the worst idea right now...
Here's the nutritional breakdown from Fitbit...
Groceries I had on hand...
- Better than Bouillon (veggie)
- pearl barley
- salt
- olive oil
- onions
- scallions
- lemon
Groceries I had to buy...
- kale (1.02lb @ $1.99/lb = $2.03)
- swiss chard (actually, now that I'm looking at my receipt, I see they didn't charge me for the chard.... oops! my luck, I guess?)
- spinach ($2.49)
- dill ($1.99)
- fennel ($1.99)
- mint ($1.29)
Total monies spent for the entire recipe: $9.79
Total monies spent for each of these 4 meals....
$2.45 per meal
Cooking!
Soup is soup (if it's not fancy and strained or with garnish or whatever). So this was nice and easy with just a bunch of prep and dump to do. As I cooked the barley, I chopped all the greens and prepped everything into two separate bowls for the two different steps of "adding": the fennel fronds, herbs, and spinach into one bowl; the kale, chard, and fried onions (when they were done) into another. All this also while the pizza dough rose and the pizza toppings cooked (more on that in the pizza post). When the barley was done, in went the big bowl of onions and hearty greens (then topped the pizzas and got them into the oven). Don't be intimidated by the amount of greens, because they will cook down! But DO use a large-ish pot... I use my four-quart pot, and this soup fills it up to the brim. When the hearty greens were cooked down, in went the spinach and herbs. I let them cook down and then stirred it all up to portion into my quart containers to bring to work. And at last, I quartered a lemon into wedges to bring to work and keep in the fridge to squeeze into the soup after heating it.
I was a little nervous that this would be too light to sustain me through our long days, but it has been killing it this week! And I am getting all the nutrition I've been craving while still getting some soup to warm my belly... mission accomplished!
