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I made soup for Thursday night dinner. I had a package of Pereg Soup Mix (Pereg is a natural foods company that has been around since 1906), which I had picked up at T.J. Maxx, then forgotten about. It’s a mix of barley and various kinds of beans, with an expiration date of fourteen months ago. Oops. I’d used another expired package a while back, and I had trouble softening the beans, despite lengthy soaking. So, I grabbed my newly purchased copy of J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Food Lab and read that beans should be soaked in salted water and cooked in salted water.
I used about 1 Tbs. coarse salt for the soaking, which was about 14 hours by the time I got around to them. I drained them, then used another 1 Tbs. coarse salt in the water in which I cooked them. I had beautifully done beans and barley in an hour. In a separate, larger pot, I sautéed carrots, celery, half a leftover red bell pepper, and mushrooms in olive oil. I added three cloves minced garlic, then ¼ cup Penzey’s dried onion re-constituted in 1 cup chicken broth. (That’s my workaround, since my husband seems to do ok with dried onion.) I added leftover browned ground turkey from the pizza earlier this week, and some more chicken broth. I seasoned with 1 Tbs. Penzey’s Bouquet Garni and 1 tsp. of Penzey’s Forward (salt free substitute of spices to use instead of salt). I simmered it for 15 minutes, then added the bean mixture, along with freshly minced parsley, and let it simmer for 40 minutes. It has fabulous taste, but it is a bit salty from how I cooked the beans, so perhaps I’ll use somewhat less salt next time. (The Food Lab does not specify how much salt is needed to get the good result.) We ate it with cornbread.
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