How to Cook Pearl Barley

You have two solid ways to cook pearl barley. The rice method uses a measured 1:3 ratio - 1 cup of barley to 3 cups of water - cooked covered until all the liquid is absorbed. It's easy but the pot can scorch if your heat runs hot, and the barley sometimes ends up gummy from sitting in its own starch.

The pasta method, which this tutorial follows, uses an abundance of salted water that you drain off at the end. No scorched pan, no gluey starch, and the grain stays separate. The trade-off is you lose a little of the cooking water's nutrition down the drain - a fair price for cleaner texture and a foolproof result.

Fill a 3-quart saucepan with several inches of water and bring it to a rolling boil over high heat. A wide, heavy-bottomed pot helps the starchy water stay calm once the barley goes in - barley loves to froth up and run over the rim of a narrow pot.

Once the water is boiling, add a generous tablespoon of kosher salt. The water should taste like a mild broth. Underseasoning the cooking water is the easiest way to end up with bland-tasting grain - salt now, not after.

Measure out 1 cup of pearl barley. Look for a bag labeled pearled or pearl - the indigestible outer husk has been polished off, which is why it cooks faster than hulled or naked barley. Naked barley and pearled barley are the same thing under two different names.

One cup of dry pearl barley swells into about 3.5 cups cooked, which serves four as a hearty side or three as a grain bowl base. Want leftovers for tomorrow's salad? Double the batch - cooked barley keeps in the fridge for five days and reheats well.

Tip the dry barley into a fine-mesh strainer and rinse under cold running water for about 30 seconds. This washes off surface dust and the powdery starch coating that builds up in the bag. The water running off will be cloudy at first and clear once you're done.

While the barley drains, pick through the grains with your fingers and look for any small stones, twigs, or shriveled hulls. They occasionally make it through commercial sorting, and biting one is unpleasant. It only takes 10 seconds and saves a chipped tooth.

Pour the rinsed barley into the boiling water and stir once with a wooden spoon to break up any clumps. The water will calm down for a moment, then return to a boil within a minute or two.

As soon as it's boiling again, drop the heat to medium-low so the pot settles into a steady simmer. You want gentle bubbling, not a rolling boil - a hard boil makes the starchy water froth and overflow, and it knocks the grains around hard enough to break them up. A calm simmer cooks the barley evenly all the way through.

Let the barley simmer for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally so nothing settles on the bottom and sticks. The water turns increasingly cloudy as the grains release starch - that's normal and exactly why you'll rinse them at the end.

Start tasting at the 40-minute mark. A cooked grain should be tender with a pleasant chew, the way good pasta is al dente. If it still crunches, give it another 5 minutes. If it's gone soft and mushy, drain right away. Hulled or naked barley takes closer to an hour - check the bag.

Tip the pot into a colander set in the sink. Run cold water through the grains for about 10 seconds and toss with the colander - this rinses off the last of the surface starch so the cooked barley stays separate instead of clumping, and it stops the residual cooking so the grains don't get mushy sitting in their own heat.

Shake the colander well to drain. Now use it however you like: as a base for grain bowls, simmered into beef-and-barley soup, tossed warm with olive oil, lemon, and fresh herbs for a tabbouleh-style salad, or simply finished with a pat of butter and a squeeze of lemon as a simple side. Cooked barley keeps in a sealed container in the fridge for 5 days.