A watercolour of a bowl of dark amber onion broth with pearl barley grains settled at the bottom
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from French soupe à l'oignon, in the peasant form without cheese or a gratin

Onion and barley 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
4
Burners
1
Pans
1
Water
1.3 L
Active
10 min
Total
55 min

Ingredients

Four ingredients doing real work, and the browning of the onion is all of it.

Take the onion further than feels safe. Pale gold is not enough, you want deep amber, right at the edge of catching, because that colour is the entire flavour of the soup. It takes about five minutes in hot oil and goes from right to burnt in fifteen seconds, so stand over it.

  1. Oil hot, dried onion in. Stir constantly. Deep amber, then immediately add a splash of water to stop it cooking further.
  2. 1.2 litres of water, the stock cubes, herbs and barley.
  3. Simmer, lid ajar, 40 minutes, until the barley is tender and the broth has thickened around it.
  4. Malt vinegar and a lot of black pepper off the heat.

Malt rather than cider vinegar here on purpose: it is rougher and maltier, and the dish is already brown and sweet enough to carry it.

Serves 4.

What this was adapted from

French soupe à l'oignon, in the peasant form without cheese or a gratin

  • onions caramelised slowly for an hour → dried onion browned hard in oil, and malt vinegar for depth

    Forty minutes of caramelising fresh onion is the whole flavour of the original and there is no shortcut to it. Browning dried onion hard gets perhaps two-thirds of the way in five minutes; malt vinegar and a long simmer with barley put back some of the depth. It is a plainer soup that does not claim otherwise.