About this Recipe

Vegetables soups are one of the easiest meals to throw together and you really need never waste any food if you are into making soups. We eat enough soup that it is made at least once a week, providing easy lunches for many of the week days. You get to basically clean out the fridge each week of produce you purchased that is not maybe quite so perfect as the day you bought it but you don't want to be wasteful and throw it out. With something like a hearty vegetable soup, you can substitute, add or leave out ingredients and you will always end up with a tasty soup so long as you have a nice broth and some seasonings.

Grandmother’s TIPS for Hearty Vegetable Barley Tomato Soup:

1. We used frozen purple cabbage in this pot of soup. Freezing cabbage makes it very tender when cooked. Freezing cabbage is also a good way to preserve it if you find you have some cabbage left in the refrigerator and are not using up. We shredded our cabbage before freezing in this case, but you can also freeze cabbages whole.

2. When you make a large pot of soup, there is food enough for more than one meal. The best way to keep leftover soup fresh tasty and so that it does not get all mushy, is to just reheat the amount you are going to eat and leave the rest refrigerated.

3. Freezing individual portions in ziploc bags makes for some quick and easy meals on days when you don't have time to cook.

4. A delicious add on to any soup or stew recipe is this Easy Bread Recipe.

5. The broth you add to the soup will influence the flavor so be sure you like the brand of the liquid broth or cubed broth you select. Become a label reader and check out what ingredients are in those bouillon cubes and boxed broths.

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Ingredients

(Print)

Makes: 32 cups - Large soup pot

1 cup barley - put the barley to soak before beginning. Soak for at least 30 minutes.

2 Tablespoons butter

1 medium sized onion, diced

2 celery sticks, sliced thin

1 teaspoon salt

1 Tablespoon pre-roasted garlic OR 2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced.

12 cups broth (3-946ml packs) of your choice, divided - chicken, beef, vegetable or combination of any of these

8 cups of potatoes, peeled, washed, cut into small cubes, covered with cold water

1 small squash, peeled and cut into small bite size pieces

4 cups thinly sliced carrots, peeled

1 cup shredded cabbage, purple or green. (We had some frozen we used)

1 cup frozen corn

4 cups stewing tomatoes, we used our own homemade canned tomatoes

Directions

This recipe makes 32 cups of hearty homemade soup. With this type of recipe you can switch out ingredients and substitute other veggies and amounts. When you are accustomed to making homemade soups you will find this is a great way to use up items that have been in the refrigerator or freezer. Start by preparing all your ingredients.

1. Put the pearl barley into a bowl and cover with cold water. Soak for at least 30 minutes before using.

Tip: Peel the potatoes, wash and cut into small bite size pieces. Put the prepared potatoes into a bowl and put enough cold water to just cover them. This will keep them from going brown and you will also use the water in the soup.

2. Peel and slice the carrots, peel and chop the squash into small cubes and measure out the shredded cabbage and corn.

3. Dice the onion into small pieces.

4. Slice the celery into thin pieces.

5. Melt the butter into the soup pot over medium low heat. Add the onions and celery and saute until soft.

We also had about a tablespoon of roasted garlic leftover that was in the freezer so we added that to the pot. If you want to use garlic, you can always substitute by mincing 2 garlic cloves and adding to the pot once the onions and celery are sauteed and cooking about 2 more minutes.

6. Add 8 cups of broth to the pot. Save the last 4 cups to add later. You can use chicken, beef or vegetable broth or a combination of them.

7. Bring to a boil, add the barley and cook for 25 minutes.

8. Add all the chopped veggies to the pot, including the water that the potatoes have been sitting in. Stir together and continue boiling for 20 minutes.

9. Use an immersion blender for the canned stewed tomatoes to blend them into a smooth liquid. Add the tomatoes to the soup pot. Stir in to combine. This is a very hearty thick soup and the barley will continue to expand.

10. Add the final 2 cups of chicken broth and stir in. Bring to a boil and shut off.

This soup keeps very well refrigerated for several days. When reheating soup, always just reheat the amount you plan to eat and leave the rest refrigerated. The leftover soup will last longer and stay nicer this way.

ENJOY!

Return to this Hearty Vegetable Barley Tomato Soup recipe or check out more recipes at Grandmother's Kitchen

Everyone in our family knows how to make healthy homemade soups. Soup recipe ideas are the launching pad for innovations to what goes into the pot. We are great lovers of soup and if we are asked what is the best soup recipe from our kitchen, well there are favorites for sure. Our Creamy Potato Dumpling Soup Recipe ranks as one of the tops on the family favorite list. Some recipes require sticking closer to what is asked for, but vegetable soup recipes allow you to stray more.

A note about label reading and how we choose products: We are avid label readers, primarily avoiding added artificial flavor enhancers. I am also a researcher and nutritionist who likes to take a balanced approach and updated perspective on health trends. There have been so many articles and headlines that create scares over the years about things like MSG, and like any normal person, we want to be healthy and avoid things that are deemed unhealthy. The tough part with this is that studies are so incredibly mixed when you really dig down into the actual research. If you like digging into this sort of stuff and getting a balanced opinion then definitely check out the article: "Is MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) bad for your health?," Examine.com, published on 20 December 2012, last updated on 10 May 2018, https://examine.com/nutrition/is-msg-bad-for-your-health/

For us, it comes down to choosing a couple of brands that we like the ingredients for our own reasons, and when they go on sale, we like to stock up on extras. Of course, you can also make your own basic soup broth from scratch too.