How To Cook Barley

Hello, I'm going to show you how to cook barley. Now, barley is an amazing cereal grain. It contains 8 amino acids and it's actually been shown to help lower cholesterol.

So, I think it's a product that we really need to make more use of. It's really simple and easy to cook as well. So first of all, we just start with giving it a good wash under the sink.

So, this is a 500 gram bag and typically we use half of this for 2 or 3 people but maybe we're just a little more greedy, so simply tip it in your colander and wash it through the best you can. So after it's washed, tip it back into a nice big saucepan and there is a bit of a trick to barley. You need to use cold water in particular and really I would say a third of the saucepan fill up with water.

Now, we use filtered water and alkalized water and it really gives a much better flavor to whatever you're cooking. So now, when you've got enough water, we just pop it over to the hob, bring to the boil as quickly as you can and leave boiling for maybe 30 seconds or a minute and then we get rid of that water, we start again with fresh water and we leave that to cook, maybe for an hour. Keep checking it as the time goes by; make sure there's enough water in there.

If it boils away, obviously, you're going to get a burnt saucepan and not a very nice tasting barley. So the barley has been boiling now for just a couple of minutes, we're going to put it in the colander and give it another good wash and we're going to start again with some more fresh water. So leave the barley to cook for another hour and then here's one that I cooked earlier for you and it's just been left to cool and then left in the fridge because you can eat barley hot and cold.

Now, a really nice way of eating this is to chop up finely raw vegetables and mix it in for a nice barley salad. You can have lightly warmed mushrooms, mix again with the barley and top with some soya sauce. And another really interesting way to enjoy your barley is to actually cook it in orange juice and then mix it up with some tropical fruits, some pineapples, some bananas, some kiwis and have a really tasty, healthy dessert.

Hope you enjoy your barley. .