The pickle differs from other soups in that pickles are used for its preparation. The recipe for pickle with pearl barley or oatmeal is a traditional recipe for Russian cuisine, known since ancient times. In more modern versions, rice is used, because it is cooked faster, but it does not give the necessary density, and the taste is already completely different. Many people think that the most delicious soup is pickle with pearl barley, and nothing else. A pickle is prepared, usually on meat broth, and meat is necessarily included in it. The flesh or beef ribs are best for pickle, but you can take any other part, or you can use pork - it is also very tasty.
Recipe for pickle with pearl barley
To prepare 4 liters of pickle, you need to take half a kilogram of meat, one and a half to two onions, half a kilogram of potatoes, 100 grams of pearl barley, one small carrot, 300 grams of pickles, dill, fresh or dried. From spices we need classic black pepper and bay leaf. Pepper can be used as peas or ground, or you can use it all together. There is such a recipe for pickle with pearl barley, which in addition to these ingredients also includes tomato juice or tomatoes, but they are not entirely appropriate there: cucumbers give acid to the soup, but tomatoes, and especially juice from them, are quite capable of spoiling the color of the dish.
Before cooking pickle with pearl barley, of course, you need to cook meat and broth. We put the meat cut in portions into the pan, pour cold water and, slightly salting, bring to a boil. If you salt the meat right now, then the broth will turn out to be more transparent, since salt will draw blood from the meat before it boils, and after boiling it can be removed with foam. Meat is placed in cold water because it is very important to get a rich broth for cooking the soup, and if you put the meat in boiling water, it will immediately cover with an impenetrable crust and will boil worse. After boiling, carefully remove the foam, reduce the heat and cook the meat on low heat for about an hour, and then add the thoroughly washed pearl barley. Pearl barley is cooked for about an hour, so put the finely chopped potatoes in a pan about 30-40 minutes after pearl barley.
With onions and carrots, you can do different things. The traditional recipe for pickle with pearl barley involves frying both carrots and onions, however, if you need to reduce the calorie content of the dish, or the family just does not like frying, that is, other options. For example, if you don’t like boiled onions and carrots floating in a plate (this is especially common for children), you can just put it whole, along with potatoes or a little earlier, after making cross-shaped incisions to a depth of about 1.5 - 2 centimeters, and just cut the carrots in half or cut in circles - so the vegetables will give their flavor to the soup, and pulling them out of the plate will be quite easy.
Cucumbers are necessarily added to the soup after the potatoes have boiled enough, otherwise it will be solid, as if glass, and tasteless, so it is best to put out in the broth. The recipe for pickle with pearl barley involves finely chopped cucumbers, but you can rub them on a coarse grater - in this case, they will need to be added to the soup about 10 minutes before the end of cooking, while chopped and stewed are put together with the frying in about five minutes to readiness.
Spices, bay leaves and black pepper are put in pickle before the end of cooking, then greens are added. At this point, you need to try the soup for salt and acid - if something is not enough, then you need to salt or add cucumber pickle, but after that the soup should boil a little. Then the pickle is turned off and left to brew for a while. Serve it with sour cream.