Beef Barley Stew

I love beef stew and I really like my beef stew recipe, but sometimes you have no other choice but to mess around with your ingredients. Sometimes you forget that you didn't actually buy the chicken for your Chicken Tortellini Soup. Or maybe the kid's throw all of your eggs on the floor. Whatever, sometimes you just overdose on potatoes. It can happen.

So, every year my father-in-law make a big corn beef, cabbage and boiled potato dinner. He loves us all to celebrate our Irish-ness, but if you hate corn beef like me, you are having potatoes for dinner. Just potatoes and a lot of them. Now he always offers to make me something special, but I am an adult. I would NEVER ask him to slave away in the kitchen longer than he needs to. I do what any other adult would do, I masterfully take the corn beef from my plate and slip it into my napkin. No one ever knows! (Except when the kids start asking why I smell like hot dogs.)

I really couldn't bear the thought of ingesting one more potato, even if it was swimming alongside some beef and carrots. I thought it might be a better idea to substitute them with pearl barley. Believe me, my stomach was happier for it. Hopefully I will be back to my potato loving self once I get through Saint Patrick's Day!

Ingredients
1 lb stew meat
2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp olive oil
3 carrots
1 cup pearl barley
4 cups beef broth
4 cups hot water
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tbsp salt
1 tsp pepper

Step 1:
Trim fat from stew meet. Cut into bit sized pieces. Coat with flour. Brown meat in olive oil. In a separate pot fill with 4 cups beef broth and 4 cups hot water. Once beef is browned, add beef to broth.

Step 2:
Chop 3 carrots. Add to broth with garlic powder, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil.

Step 3:
Add 1 cup barley and reduce to a simmer. Cook for 1 hour.

Step 4:
Serve hot with bread.

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