I grew up eating this Baked Barley with Mushrooms and I always looked forward to it on chilly winter nights. It’s a simple dish made with pearled barley cooked in a flavorful mix of vegetable broth, butter, and mushrooms for an extra umami kick. Plus, it cooks mostly in the oven, leaving your hands and attention available to tend to other things. It’s a nice alternative to plain rice for meals like pot roast, brisket, baked pork chops, or any roasted or braised meat. Those hearty little grains are perfect for soaking up every last drop of your pan drippings!
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What Kind of Baking Dish to Use
You’ll need some sort of baking dish with a tight-fitting lid, like a Dutch oven, because if the steam from the broth is not held inside as it bakes, the barley will not cook through. I used an enameled cast-iron Dutch oven that was probably a little too big for the scale of this recipe, but it still turned out great. The recipe makes about four cups, so something in the 2-3 quart size range is probably ideal. Glass, ceramic, or cast iron will all work as long as it has a tight-fitting lid.
If your baking dish is not safe for use on the stovetop, simply use a skillet for the first couple of steps (sautéing the mushrooms), then transfer to the baking dish when adding the barley and broth.
What is Pearled Barley?
It’s very important that you use pearled barley for this recipe. Pearled barley is whole barley grains that have had the outer husk removed and are then are polished to remove some or all of the outer bran. The resulting grain is tender and chewy once cooked, and doesn’t take quite as long to cook as hulled barley. You can usually find pearled barley near the dry rice and beans in the grocery store, or near other specialty grains.
I used the Bob’s Redmill brand, which is slightly less polished than other brands that I’ve used and it resulted in a slightly more firm grain.
Add More Vegetables
This recipe is pretty flexible and you can experiment with adding more hearty vegetables, like carrot, celery, onion, turnip, or rutabega. I suggest dicing the vegetables and sautéing them briefly with the mushrooms before adding the remaining ingredients.
What to Serve with Baked Barley
This baked barley would go awesome with something like Creamy Mushroom Chicken with Crispy Onions, Herb Roasted Pork Tenderloin, Slow Cooker Rosemary Garlic Beef Stew, or pot roast.
Baked Barley with Mushrooms
Servings 4 1 cup eachIngredients
- 2 cloves garlic ($0.16)
- 8 oz. mushrooms ($1.49)
- 4 Tbsp butter ($0.40)
- 1 cup pearled barley ($0.57)
- 2 cups vegetable broth ($0.26)
- 1/2 tsp dried thyme ($0.05)
- 1/8 tsp freshly cracked black pepper ($0.02)
- 1 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley (optional) ($0.10)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Mince the garlic and slice the mushrooms
- Add the garlic, mushrooms, and butter to a Dutch oven. Sauté over medium heat until the mushrooms have softened.
- Add the barley, vegetable broth, thyme and freshly cracked pepper to the dutch oven. Stir to combine, place the lid on top, and transfer to the oven. Bake the barley for one hour.
- After baking for one hour, stir the barley to fluff it up. Give the barley a taste and adjust the salt or pepper to your liking. Top with chopped fresh parsley just before serving.
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Equipment
- Dutch Oven
Nutrition
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How to Make Baked Barley with Mushrooms – Step by Step Photos
Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Add 4 Tbsp butter, 2 cloves of minced garlic, and 8oz. sliced mushrooms to a pot. Sauté over medium heat until the mushrooms have softened.
This is what the pearled barley looks like. As mentioned above, this is Bob’s Redmill brand, which appears to be less polished than other generic brands I’ve used in the past. Pearled barley often looks very white, so this barley still has a considerable amount of bran left intact. Because of that, the grains were a little more firm this time around. Either way, it still tasted great!
Add one cup pearled barley, ½ tsp dried thyme, a little freshly cracked black pepper (⅛ tsp), and 2 cups vegetable broth to the pot. Stir briefly to combine.
Place a lid on the pot and transfer it to the oven. Bake the barley in the 350ºF oven for one hour.
After baking it will look like this–the mushrooms will have risen to the top, fully covering the barley.
Give the barley a good stir. Taste the barley and add salt or pepper if desired.
Top with chopped parsley just before serving.
This receipt was fine but needed a little something so I added a bit of lemon juice to give a tanginess.
Is this quick barley?
Quick barley is pre-steamed so it cooks much faster than pearled barley, which is used here. Quick barley wouldn’t work with this recipe as written, I’m afraid!
I only have hulled barley. I plan to soak overnight and then use this recipe. Do I need to increase the cooking time as well?
If you do, it should only need maybe 5-10 more minutes! Just keep on eye on it but I think it should be fine.
This was an easy dish to put together. Threw it in the oven while I prepped the rest of the meal. Left it covered on the stovetop while the fish was cooking in the oven. It was still warm when I fluffed and served. Very tasty.
I want to try this as an adaptation of my riff on “church lady rice/stick of butter rice” using barley instead of rice.
Using my solar oven I have to start with about half the broth to fill the solar oven tray, then after 20 minutes or so add the rest of the broth. Other than that minor inconvenience, it works very well.
Can this be done in an Instant Pot? Directions for cooking?
Hi JD, you probably can do something like this in an Instant Pot, but without testing it I wouldn’t be able to provide concrete instructions.
This was a very tasty and I will make it again. Though I will probably add another cup of broth as while the barley was all cooked it was very stuck to the pot in places and a little dry.
This is such a great recipe, I make it regularly, in a much lazier way though… I either put uncooked mushrooms or shredded cabbage mix (and skip the butter) and add (uncooked) chicken sausages on top, follow all the other instructions and it’s the best comfort meal ever!
Hi, team —
I’m fairly certain this same recipe could be made with equal success using pearled farro, rather than barley (the farro is what I have in the pantry at present). My question is, how much more cooking time would this ingredient switch require?
Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated, and thank you for your hard work and all of the great recipes. Happy holidays!
This was great. I didn’t want too many leftovers, so I cut the broth and barley in half, but kept the mushrooms the same. Turned out wonderfully. Nice and ‘meaty’. Wonderful side dish.
On the recommendation of several comments I added some additional vegetables to the double recipe I decided on – half an onion sautéed with the garlic, and then one large parsnip and three large carrots cubed and pan-fried until softened. I will admit to being concerned about this since it turned out to be a large volume of food that I hoped wouldn’t be screwed up (I fitted everything into a 9×13 pan with tightly-wrapped foil over the top, and the pan was mostly full), but my trust was validated once again. I definitely needed to add some salt at the end during the fluffing stage, but it was delicious. I paired this with the creamy mushroom chicken and got many compliments.
Sounds like a dish I made from the Women’s Day magazine when I first got married and then I lost the recipe. Do you think this would freeze well?
Yes, I think this would freeze pretty good. :)
Absolutely delicious! I used a 3-qt Le Crueset small dutch oven, perfect. Diced small onion and sauteed with garlic. Definitely making this again.
Delicious! I halved the butter to make it a little healthier and used farro instead of barley. Next time, I’ll double the mushrooms and double the recipe – it’s a lot of oven time for ~4 cups of food.