Easy Ground Beef and Barley Soup is one example of comfort food.

Soup, in general, is one of my ideal comfort foods.

In the culture of health and wellness, our comfort food can feel shameful, secret and even “unhealthy”.

In the video above, I stated that I felt “kitchen shame”. My kitchen is dated, and not your usual studio kitchen.

I gave my head a shake, and talked to my inner critic, and brought the discussion of food shame, food conflict and food comfort to the video above.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Let’s get to the recipe.

Economical Beef Barley Soup with Ground Beef

I am not a fan of long blog posts when it comes to recipes. If you want to go deeper into comfort food, or food conflict, watch the video, and comment. Or, find me on Instagram and let’t talk!

You can also comment at the end of the post!

Here’s the recipe:

1 1/2 pound ground beef

1 tsp olive oil (or oil of your choice)

1 cup diced onion

1 cup diced carrots

1/2 cup diced celery

3 cloves garlic (or more)

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp dried basil

8 cups broth

1 bay leaf

1 potato

2/3 to 3/4 cup pearl barley

Salt, pepper as needed

How to:

First, set out a large pan, on medium temp. Add olive oil, or oil of your choice, if the meat is very lean. Put meat in the pan to cook. Cook until almost no pink shows.

Add in the onions, and carrots. Stir into the beef and cook for 3 minutes. Add in the garlic. Stir, and cook until onions look translucent.

Add in the thyme, onion powder and basil. Stir.

Transfer the meat mixture to a slow cooker. Add your broth, and set the slow cooker on high, or for 4 hours.

Add bay leaf.

Let sit in the cooker for an hour, to warm up, and add diced potato.

Cook until potato soft and soup is hot!

Serve with a side salad, or whatever else you desire.