Friday, November 12, 2010

Failure Friday: Mushroom Barley Soup

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This doesn’t look too bad, does it? I actually enjoyed my first heaping bowlful when I first made this soup from a tried-and-true cookbook, Robin Robertson’s Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker.

What went wrong? Too much barley. My leftovers turned into an inedible gelatinous blob of goop. What a disappointment, especially after I enjoyed my first bowl and used the last of my dried mushrooms.

How can this be fixed? Use less barley. Of course, it seems so obvious now. But I was following the recipe! (Actually, maybe I was not following it correctly. I’m don’t always measure.) The mushrooms were good, the carrots were good, the broth was good – I loved the touch of smoke paprika and chives. There was just too much barley.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

9 comments:

  1. I like the Mushroom Barley soup in How it All vegan. It's got great spices, chickpeas, mushrooms and barley <3

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  2. well it LOOKS good at least, haha ;)

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  3. aaaaaaaahahahhaha! sorry, Jessica - i'm laughing because when dan and i thought about veganism we started by introducing vegan and veggie meals into our weekly eats - just kinda sussing it out while i read up on veganism to make sure we would rock it right. anyways.......so here we were, going-to-become-vegan-soon n00bs and i found this recipe on allrecipes.com for this pine nut barley bake. i tossed it in the crockpot so it could cook whilst we were at work and by the time we got home the barley had taken over! it was huuuuuge and completely mushy and kinda dry at the same time. totally inedible. we ordered papa john's instead. we were really disappointed, to say the least, but we continued to try our hand at vegan cooking and had many successes to make up for it - and then once january 1st of '08 rolled around we had tried lots of yumminesses and felt more confident and ready to become vegans. anyways........sadface for the barley getting crazy on ya, but i'm glad that first bowl was deeelicious! oh yeah - and thanks for the deer update. i was telling dan about them and he was a bit worried as well - i'm gonna let him know they're a-okay. happy friday, Jessica - and i hope you enjoy your weekened!

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  4. Beware of the barley! I can totally relate, some of the worst meals I've made have involved barley (user error). The soup does look good first time round though! Lovely colors. And I like that bowl and the tablecloth too.

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  5. Too bad you had problems with the leftover soup. You know, I have only eaten/cooked barley a few times and I think every time it was in soup. I really need to get some and experiment with it.

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  6. Oh but that bowl sure does look delicious.

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  7. It does look good but too bad it got too thick as leftovers. Barley is something you need to use with a light hand. I would have tried reheating it and adding more veg stock or water.

    Ali

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  8. Same thing happened to me when I made barley soup in a slow-cooker.

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  9. Awww stink about the soup not working after an evening. It does *look* delicious though!

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