Episode 077 Instant Pot Beef and Barley

Intro: Welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 

Susie Weinrich: As I record this podcast episode, I am sitting at my desk and I have my new little happy light sitting up in the corner, and it truly is making me so happy. I definitely suffer from, oh, what’s it called? SAD. Seasonal Affective Disorder. When it’s really cold and not very sunny out and you can’t go outside and get any fresh air, it is seasonal depression. I think they also call it winter blues. So I ordered myself one of these little happy lights and set it on my desk, and I’m telling you, it is like my eyeballs are soaking up the energy from the light. It is wild. So I highly recommend, if you suffer from any kind of winter blues syndrome, that you get one of these lights. 

I also recommend that you make this recipe that we’re making today. It’s Instant Pot Beef and Barley Stew. It is one of the most popular recipes on momsdinner.net, which is where I share all of my recipes. That’s where you can find any recipe you listen to on Let’s Make Dinner. You can find it on momsdinner.net, the website.

This recipe to date, I think, has around 105 star reviews. That’s huge. That is testament from your peers, your cooking peers, that say, this recipe is amazing. So it’s not really complicated over the top flavors. It’s really basic, just hearty stew. Let me tell you, I have a ton of women, just because that’s a huge demographic for my site, that say that they have very picky husbands and that they absolutely love this stew recipe. So if you’ve got some picky eaters in your house, absolutely give this recipe a try.

So of course the one piece of equipment that you’re going to need to make this is your Instant Pot. Instant Pot is actually a brand. You just need an electric pressure cooker. So if you’ve got one of those, it’ll work. I use the Instant Pot Duo plus nine in one six quart style. It’s a lot of words. I also recently bought a second Instant Pot because I love mine so much, and I ended up going with a very similar Instant Pot, and instead of nine in one, it’s seven in one, so it just has seven functions instead of nine functions. Because I found that I really didn’t use all nine functions. It was unnecessary money to spend. So I will link both of those Instant Pot types in the show notes. So if you don’t have one and you’re interested in getting one, you can check both of those out on Amazon. Of course, if you have any questions about Instant Pot, I would love to have you guys email me and we can have a little conversation. My email is susie@momsdinner.net. It’s Susie, s u s i e. 

Tips and Tricks: Let’s go over a couple tips about this recipe before I share the recipe completely. First of all, this recipe is made with stew meat. So if you need a really economical recipe, this is a great one. Stew meat is a great cut of beef that definitely needs either a longer, low and slow cooking time, or like with this one, hot and high pressure. Stew meat works really, really well in the Instant Pot. 

Another ingredient that we use here is something called beef base. You can find beef base in the soup aisle. It’s going to be like bouillon, but way more flavorful and way more intense. So it usually comes in a jar or a tub, and it will be in a paste form. The brand that we love to use is the Better than Bouillon brand. That’s an actual brand. I just got the roast beef base. It really punches the flavor up for you. 

Now another ingredient that you’re going to want to have is barley, and there’s going to be a couple different options when you go to buy barley. I always get the pearl barley for this recipe. Pearl barley is going to be longer cooking barley, so it’s going to hold up to the Instant Pot pressure while that stew meat cooks down. There’s another type of barley called quick cooking barley, but you don’t need that quick cooking. You want to get the pearl barley.

The rest of the ingredients for this recipe are just your average garlic, onions, oil, seasonings, beef broth, salt and pepper. So I think we can go ahead and get into the full recipe for your Instant Pot Beef and Barley Stew. 

Instant Pot Beef and Barley Soup Recipe: You’re going to start this recipe by popping your Instant Pot onto saute mode. Actually, your Instant Pot saute mode has three different functions. There is low heat, normal heat, and high heat. You just want normal heat to saute your veggies. Low heat is more like, let’s keep things warm. High heat is going to be more searing, browning or wok style cooking. To scroll through all of those functions, you can just hit your saute button a couple times and you’ll see it scroll through all of those functions. So just make sure it’s normal. 

Add that oil. You’re going to add one tablespoon of oil, and then you’re going to add in one yellow or white onion that’s chopped. Two large celery stalks that are sliced. Three garlic cloves that are chopped. One and a half cups of carrots that are sliced either in coins or you can dice them. It’s up to you, you know, how you want to eat your soup. So go ahead and saute those in the oil for about five minutes. While that’s sauteing, you can get the rest of your ingredients all ready. 

So you’ll want to measure out a half a teaspoon each of onion powder and garlic powder. One and a half tablespoons of worcestershire sauce, one tablespoon of tomato paste, two teaspoons of that beef base we talked about, one teaspoon of kosher salt, half a teaspoon of black pepper. Then there is an optional ingredient here. You could add two teaspoons of fresh chopped rosemary or thyme. It just adds another little layer of flavor, but is totally optional. You do not have to add it. After those veggies saute for about five minutes, you’ll add in all of those seasonings and give them a really good stir around the pot. You want the tomato paste and the beef base to coat all of those veggies, and then also kind of start to caramelize on the bottom of the pot. Do that for just a couple minutes and then you’re going to pour in your beef broth. So you need 32 ounces of beef broth and one and a half cups of water. 

When you do that, you’re going to want to do something called de-glazing the bottom of the pot. You want to make sure that all of that tomato paste and beef broth that may be caramelized on the bottom of the pot, you need to scrape all of that up. By deglazing, you’re going to prevent getting the burn notice with your pot. Knock on wood, I have yet to get a burn notice with my pot. So the deglazing definitely works as long as you scrape up all of those bits that are on the bottom.

Now at this point, you can turn off the saute mode and we’re going to add in the rest of the ingredients. So first you’re going to add in the stew meat and you need about one and a half pounds of stew meat. If you’re just shy of that, that’s totally fine. Just make sure that all of the pieces are cut into half to one inch size pieces, so they’re bite size when you go to eat the soup. 

Then I like to pour in the one cup, and I usually do about one scant cup of pearl barley and just make sure it’s touching all of the liquid. There’s no need to give this a really good stir at this point. You kind of want that barley to be on top of the beef. 

Now you’ll close your Instant Pot and set it to either that meat slash stew mode or just manual pressure, high pressure for 25 minutes. You’ll let the pot come to pressure. It will count down from 25 to zero. Once it hits zero and it beeps at you, you’re going to do a quick release. That means you’re just going to turn that little valve on the top of the pot and all of that pressure is going to rush out and release, and then you can open the pot.

Once you open the pot, you’re going to give it a really nice stir, and then you’re going to let it cool for about 10 minutes. During that 10 minutes, it’s going to start to thicken up. So the starch from all of that barley is going to combine with the liquid and it will get nice and thick and so delicious. 

So that is it. Dinner is ready. With this soup, I like to serve on the side, either just saltine crackers or like a warm ciabatta bread or maybe if we want it to be a little bit harder, I might do a green side salad or maybe a tray with raw veggies and ranch dip. Or if you’re serving this as a weekend dinner, you can also add little tea sandwiches. Tea sandwiches are what I call them. So you just use slider buns or mini buns or pretzel buns. Put either ham or Turkey or both. Maybe a little provolone cheese and then a little bit of mayonnaise and mustard, and you have your little tea sandwiches that go perfect with soup.

As always, I will link all of the recipes that I talked about in this show, right in the show notes for you. Like I said in this episode, if you ever have any questions about the recipes, about cooking, about Instant Pot, you can always email me, susie@momsdinner.net. I would love to connect with you and answer any cooking questions that you have. 

Outro: So until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya. 

Double Dip: Now for your Double Dip. If you are following along with the Let’s Make Dinner Podcast and you enjoy cooking along and you want to be prepared for next week’s episode, I want you to make sure you have all the groceries you need. So we are making a Vegetarian Lasagna next week that is the ultimate. It is so, so good. 

So some of the ingredients you want to make sure that you have on hand to follow along next week are olive oil, onions, carrots, zucchini, garlic, a 12 ounce jar of roasted red peppers, 16 ounces of cottage cheese, one egg. Then you’ll need a few spices from your spice cabinet. So kosher salt, dried basil, dried oregano, onion powder, and garlic powder. You’ll need eight oven ready, no-boil lasagna noodles. A 24 ounce jar of marinara and then two cups of shredded mozzarella cheese. 

You can find the vegetarian lasagna recipe on momsdinner.net, and I will of course link it in the show notes for you. So mark your calendar for next Thursday and we will make Vegetarian Lasagna for dinner together.