It’s cold outside. When it is cold outside I like soup. I also love barley. A lot. I have the better part of a two pound bag of barley that I’m trying to use up before the big move sitting in my pantry. I’ve got a handful of barley soups in my repertoire, a barley mushroom soup, which is just ok, and a chicken soup with barley (from my grandma) that is delicious but requires a carcass, which I did not have. Enter Google and Beaker’s Vegetable Barley Soup from All Recipes. Beaker did something crazy with this soup… not only did she add barley, but also chickpeas. And I had a frozen bag of chickpeas in my freezer just waiting to be used up.
It’s almost like it was meant to be.
I know what you are thinking. “Chickpeas AND barley in soup … you’re crazy!” And I know. But that’s just how I (and the 13 thousand people on all recipes that have saved this recipe) roll.
And just look at it!
I was a little worried this soup might be wussy if I used the recommended vegetable stock, so I didn’t. I used beef stock and it was delicious. If you wanted to make this a vegetarian meal, by all means, use vegetable stock. If you want to make this a bit lighter, use chicken stock. That’s the thing about soup. If you want to use Beaker’s recipe, head on over to allrecipes.com. Below I give you my Beaker-inspired oh-so-delicious soup!
Vegetable Barley Chickpea Soup
Ingredients
- 9 to 10 cups vegetable, chicken, beef broth, or a mix (depending on your mood)
- 1 cup uncooked barley
- 1 tsp olive oil
- Optional: splash red or white wine (depending on broth choice)
- 1 onion
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 large carrots
- 2 stalks celery
- 1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes with juice
- 1 zucchini
- 1 (15 ounce) can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained or equivalent rehydrated chickpease
- 3 bay leaves
- spices (I used dried sage, oregano, basil, salf, pepper, hungarian paprika, curry powder, chilli powder and chilli flakes)
- splash Worcestershire sauce
Directions
- Boil 1 cup barley in 2.5 cups water in a medium sized pot. I do this very very first before I even start chopping my veggies. I don’t cook the barley in the soup for the whole time because I find it thickens it too much.
- Chop carrots, celery, and onion (I like to cut my carrots in rounds, I think those little disks of carrot are super fun).
- Heat olive oil in a large soup pot. Fry onions and pressed garlic in oil. If you are adding the optional wine, do so once the onions are soft and simmer for a few minutes.
- Add broth to the soup pot. Once it is boiling, add carrots, celery, tomatoes, zucchini, chickpeas, spices and worcestershire sauce and reduce heat to simmer.
- Once barley is mostly cooked, drain, rinse and add to soup pot. If you are like me, this will happen pretty much at the same time that you’re done with the rest of the soup.
- Cover and simmer for a total of 60-90 minutes.