This pearl barley salad is a delicious way to get in a host of veggies and is a great way to use up whatever you have in the fridge. The simple to make dressing wraps the whole thing in herby, tangy awesomeness.
As a bonus, it keeps really well in the fridge so is ideal for making ahead for work lunches.
Most salads wouldn’t be appropriate for the weather we’ve had in Cumbria lately. Snow, sleet, hail and a thermometer below zero. It is cold. This pearl barley salad however, manages to tick the hearty and filling boxes whilst keeping things healthy.
I use a few tricks here to make sure that the salad is much more flavourful than the sum of its parts. They’re handy to know when you’re making grain salads like this one. The first is that the barley is cooked in stock, allowing it to absorb all the flavour. Whilst that is happening, the sliced red onion sits in a little vinegar to take away the raw bite then we use that vinegar to make the salad dressing. The result is a salad that is ridiculously tasty.
I have been working my way through our kitchen cupboards trying to cut down on supplies and stuff, ready for our new kitchen plans to move ahead. What I’ve learnt from this is that tupperware lids vanish just like socks and that I had kept this bag of barley for way longer than I care to admit.
The barley became this really simple pearl barley salad and the lidless tupperware was banished to the ‘do we really need to keep this’ pile. The idea is that there will be less things to take over my dining room when the tear out happens. Right now, I have no idea how we’ll store the contents of our kitchen without complete chaos. If you’ve been here and done it, I’d love to hear your top tips in the comments.
Gone is the stained and cracked tupperware, but I can’t be without storage boxes for leftovers and lunches. The product I chose to replace them with came from a company called Olpro who make containers and tableware from rice husk. Huskware.
They’re essentially agricultural waste, pressed under huge amounts of pressure until they’re actually harder than glass.
The set I have is three nesting boxes and I think that’s enough for a household of two. They feel like melamine, but are completely safe for use in the microwave and in the freezer. I’ve tested both plenty and the tubs are still in great shape.
The one thing that stands out for me the most is that seal on these tubs is seriously tight. Once you’ve put the lid on, you have to pull a valve on the lid to get back inside. I can’t imagine you’d manage to make them leak if you tried.
The smallest box is ideal for packing up some pearl barley salad for lunches and so Olpro have kindly provided a set of these huskware storage boxes for me to giveaway. You can enter using the widget below.
Good luck! Find the pearl barley salad recipe here:
- 1 Red onion
- 2 Tbsp Red wine vinegar
- 125g Pearl Barley (dry weight)
- 1 Cucumber
- 1 Pepper
- 6 Tbsp Olive oil
- 2 Tsp Thyme
- 2 Tsp Oregano
- Finely slice the red onion and place in a small bowl along with the red wine vinegar. Set to one side.
- Cook the pearl barley according to packet instructions, drain and leave to cool.
- Dice the vegetables and add to a large bowl along with the cooled pearl barley.
- Remove the onion from the vinegar and add to the bowl.
- Whisk the vinegar, oil and herbs together to form the dressing.
- Drizzle the dressing in to the salad and stir through.
- Serve alongside roasted butternut squash and some salad leaves as the perfect vegetarian lunch or use as a side dish.
Try adding a stock cube to the pan as you cook the pearl barley for added flavour.
Matthew Pike (@mat_buckets) says
Looks and sounds lovely, as do the boxes.
Buckets & Spades
fionajk42 says
when we had our kitchen done, we lived off meals cooked in the microwave and on our barbecue (yes, you can use it in winter!). Also, if you are like most people, your microwave probably came with a cookbook that you’ve never looked at. If you can locate that cookbook, you will find that you can cook all sorts of things in the microwave, even rice. Otherwise there are lots of microwave-friendly meals online.