Name: Barley and bean broth
Prep time: 12 min
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 5 servings
Ingredients: 150 g Pearl barley; 1 pack Cannellini beans (tinned); 1 pack Carrots (tinned); 15 g Mushrooms (dried); 20 g Onion (dried, flakes); 4 g Mixed herbs (dried); 15 g Vegetable stock cubes; 30 ml Olive oil; 3 g Black pepper (ground); 15 ml Lemon juice (bottled)

Barley and bean broth

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Pearl barley.

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves

Burners

Pans

Water

1.6 L

Active

12 min

Total

60 min

Ingredients

A cold-weather pot that takes an hour and feeds five. Marked pantry for both reasons: the fuel cost, and the quantity, cooling and keeping cooked food applies, and without a fridge you should halve it.

Dried mushrooms covered with 1.4 litres of just-boiled water, 15 minutes. Lift, squeeze, slice. Keep the liquid, minus the gritty last centimetre.
Oil, dried onion three minutes, herbs twenty seconds.
Mushroom liquid, stock cubes, barley and the sliced mushrooms. Simmer, lid ajar, 40 minutes.
Beans with half their liquid for the last 10 minutes; drained carrots for the last 3, or they disintegrate.
Lemon juice and plenty of pepper off the heat.

It thickens dramatically as it stands and will be a stew by morning. Add hot water when reheating rather than trying to keep it thin.

Serves 5.

What this was adapted from

Scotch broth and its European cousins: the long-simmered barley and pulse soup

mutton or a bone stock simmered for hours → dried mushrooms and a stock cube

The body of a real broth comes from bones and hours. Dried mushrooms give savoury depth and a stock cube gives salt and background, which together get somewhere useful -- but this is a lighter, thinner broth than one built on a bone and does not claim otherwise.