Beefy Vegetable Barley Soup

With all this cold weather lately, I think soup was called for. I recently made some beef stock, and I thought this soup would be an excellent way to use it! Not is was this soup tasty, but it was also quick and easy - taking less than 15 minutes, and even then, the majority of the time, you could be doing something else. Another option is to make this soup into a stew by adding some potatoes and beef. If you were to do that, you could easily throw everything into a slow cooker and let that do all the work for you to enjoy later in the day. However, I didn't use any meat, so it didn't take long to get this soup on the table. However, I did add some barley to give the soup some extra substance, but you could eliminate that or add more depending on your goals. Give this soup a try on any cold day, and it will be a quick and easy way to warm yourself up! And, like most soups, this recipe is highly flexible, and you could add or remove a wide variety of materials.

Beefy Vegetable Barley Soup

by CJ Huang

Materials:

Mass	Weight	Volume	Number	Material	Notes
			1	onion, chopped
		1 cup		barley, uncooked
		1 teaspoon		Italian seasoning
		1 teaspoon		oregano
	1 pound			vegetables, chopped	I used carrots, peas, green beans, corn, and lima beans.
				water or beef stock

Methods:

1. Combine all ingredients and bring to a boil.
2. Simmer until barley cooked. (I turned off the heat soon after it reached a boil and just let the carryover heat do the rest.)

Notes: You could also throw everything into a slow cooker and let that do all the work, especially if you add meat, but since I didn't, it was pretty quick and easy to cook on the stove.