Slow Cooker Beef Barley Soup for a very chilly winter’s day

-22°C is -7.6°F (wind chill: -38°C is -38.4°F)

We had some very cold weather in December and I know some of my dear readers are experiencing some very hot weather — I can’t say which I prefer more, but at least one can put a few more layers on in the cold, not much you can take off after you’ve taken it all off in the heat (or maybe that was a vision we didn’t need!). To help combat the chill over the holidays, I made a big batch of beef barley soup which we had for a lunch and then froze the remainder for quickie servings in the future; it’s always easier to eat healthful if you are armed with healthy food.

A thick soup flavoured with lots of mushrooms and chunks of beef

Slow Cooker Beef Barley Soup

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup sweet onions, finely chopped
• 1 cup or 3 stalks celery, cubed
• 3 cloves garlic finely minced
• 1 cup pearl barley
• 1 L Low Sodium beef stock
• 5-7 dried  “fa goo” Chinese mushrooms, sliced (hydrated but save the liquid and strain it through a fine sieve)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1 1″ sprig of rosemary, finely chopped
• 400 g cubed beef (relatively small)
• 1 1/4 cup sherry
• 1-2 tsp canola oil
• Salt and Pepper to taste.
• water, if necessary

Directions:

1. Allow the beef cubes to come to room temperature. Preheat the slow cooker on high.
2. Add 1-2 tsp canola oil to a hot cast iron dutch oven and brown the beef on all sides. Add to the slow cooker pot.
3. In the same dutch oven, cook the onions until translucent, then add the garlic until fragrant. Stir in the pearl barley and toast for a few moments. Pour into the slow cooker with the beef. Add the beef stock to the slow cooker and give it a good stir.
4. Deglaze the dutch oven with the sherry and add it to the slow cooker and add the bay leaf, thyme and finely chopped rosemary. Cook for 4-6 hours on low temperature or 3-4 hours on high.
5. For the final hour, add the sliced hydrated mushrooms and the strained mushroom stock and give it a good stir.
6. After the final hour, test the barley for doneness and soup for thickness, should you want a slightly less thick soup, add more water.
7. Remove the bay leaf. Season with salt and pepper and serve with a dollop of fat free Greek Yogurt and a sprig of rosemary.
8. Cool leftovers completely and pour into plastic containers for freezing.

A nice dollop of fat free Greek Yogurt is always a nice addition. Of course the crostini with brie never hurts either!

Although December and January were very cold, in late January and early February we were bombarded with snow. A lot of snow, all at once. I know other parts of the world get snow, but this is a lot for us, particularly those of us living in the city with smaller lots which means we have a really hard time finding the space to shovel the snow off the sidewalks and driveways! Enjoy the photos below and just be grateful you didn’t have to shovel it.

This snow mound is just about 1 metre high (39″)

You can see how high the snow is piled from our gorgeous little tree!

These are our Rose of Sharon ‘trees’. They are about 3 metres (10 feet) tall, but they just look like shrubs with the snow piled up to their canopy!