Irish Beef Barley Soup

I picked up a book at Borders last month--New Soup Recipes or something like that. I love soup as a full meal--it's easy, and it's lovely when the weather is chilly.

I decided to make this soup today. It's not like I've never made Beef Barley Soup before--I love this combination--but it's the first time in forever that I've made it with stock from scratch.

I complained to my friend Leah when we chatted this afternoon and the soup was still cooking after 3 hours about not using packaged stock. But when I tried it about 30 minutes later, it was clear that the homemade stock made so much of a difference.

I hated the recipe though; instead of specifying how long it would take to boil the beef bones, meat & onions in water for the base, the book said "simmer as long as necessary". WTF!

With the lack of precision, I decided to play the recipe. I boiled two meat bones, half an onion, about 3 lbs of sirloin (which I had originally intended for more steak but decided I couldn't bear the smell of beautifully seared meat again this week), some carrots & celery stalks. After about an hour of simmering and skimming scum, I removed the meat, strained the veggies, poured in 1/2 a cup of pearled barley and a cup of yellow split peas. I also added carrots, a finely chopped leek, chopped celery and returned the meat to the pot.

I decided it was done when I was starving and the meat was tender. It's lovely!!

This is also the first meal Teo's enthusiastically received for a while.