What's YOUR Favorite Mushroom Barley Soup

[shel]

This evening I made a rather weak and mundane mushroom barley soup - I'd like to find a couple of new recipes to add to my soup collection. Anyone have a favorite mush-barley soup recipe they'd care to share? Ideally I'd like to find a recipe or technique that doesn't rely on or use a lot of heavy cream.

thanks,

shel

[shroomgirl]

mushroom barley, look toward shiitakes (dry or stems for stock, fresh for soup)....porcini another good full flavored one for barley soup.

Make a mushroom stock.....
stems/dried shrooms
water
you can add veg if desired.

thyme/garlic/onions are standard herbs/seasoning that soup, but soy sauce/sesame oil/chilis in whatever form is another profile that would work with the shiitakes

toast the barley until golden.

saute shrooms......if you only have dried shrooms, crush and use them for flavor, saute crimini or buttons for texture.

[lentil]

Either the original Moosewood or Broccoli Forest cookbook has a good one in it. Of course it's vegetarian, but you could easily sub beef stock if you wanted. It has no dairy. If you don't have access to either of these books, let me know and I'll post it.

[pgr555]

I use the Moosewood recipe for catering and people RAVE all the time. I do change ot some... herbs as shroom suggested and a variety & abundance of shrooms

[lentil]

I agree that different mushrooms add a lot of flavor as do different herbs. I'm not a barley fan because of the texture, but I like this soup!