Beef and Barley Mushroom Stew
Dried mushrooms, barley, and freeze-dried beef, rehydrated in one pot on a cold night.
- calories
- 620
- weight
- 5.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 113
- protein
- 32 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 25 min
- total time
- 30 min
- water
- 700 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Backpacking
- Basecamp
- Winter / snow
- Car camping
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Quick-cooking pearl barley | 1/2 cup | parboiled, or it will run your fuel dry |
|---|---|---|
| Dried sliced mushrooms | 1/3 cup | cremini or mixed wild |
| Freeze-dried cooked beef | 1.5 oz | or a foil pouch of roast beef |
| Potato flakes | 2 tbsp | stands in for the diced potatoes |
| Beef bouillon | 2 tsp | |
| Dried diced carrot and celery | 3 tbsp | |
| Dried minced onion | 1 tbsp | |
| Freeze-dried peas | 2 tbsp | |
| Ghee or olive oil | 1 tbsp | replaces the butter, no cooler needed |
| Dried parsley, salt, black pepper | 1 tsp total |
Method
- Put the barley, mushrooms, carrot, celery, onion, bouillon, and beef in the pot with 700 ml of water.
- Bring it to a boil, then hold it at the lowest flame that keeps it moving. Twenty minutes.
- Check the barley. It should be chewy, not crunchy. Add a splash of water if the pot is going dry.
- Kill the heat. Stir in the peas, potato flakes, oil, parsley, salt, and pepper.
- Lid on for five minutes. The peas soften and the flakes thicken it while you wait.
The original is a leftover-prime-rib soup, which is not a thing you have on trail. Freeze-dried beef and bouillon do the same job at a fraction of the weight, and dried mushrooms bring back most of the savory depth that gets lost when the fresh vegetables go. Butter becomes ghee or oil because neither needs a cooler.
Barley is the reason this simmers instead of steeps. Quick-cooking pearl barley gets there in about twenty minutes; regular pearl barley takes closer to forty and will cost you a canister. The potato flakes at the end are doing what the diced potatoes did in the original, thickening the broth into something that coats the spoon.
Note on tags: barley is wheat-adjacent enough that this is not gluten-free, and the beef rules out the vegetarian tags.
Packing
Everything dry goes in one bag except the peas and potato flakes, which go in a small second bag so they do not cook the whole time. Oil rides in a dropper bottle.
Variations
- Swap the barley for instant rice and cut the simmer to ten minutes. That also makes it gluten-free.
- A pouch of tomato paste stirred in at the end darkens the broth considerably.
- Cook it at home in a dehydrator run and rehydrate at camp if you would rather not burn 20 minutes of fuel.
https://www.bowlofdelicious.com/beef-barley-soup