Warming barley soup with crispy chanterelles: A fall delight

Barley soup is great for warming and filling. It is an excellent choice for a dinner for the whole family. With the addition of sautéed chanterelles, it becomes a dish worthy of a restaurant. The household will be delighted.

It's hard to find a more aromatic addition to barley soup. Loved by many, chanterelles can have many culinary uses, but combined with warming barley soup with ribs, they are as good as it gets. However, before you can enjoy this delicacy, you need to properly prepare the chanterelles. They should be cleaned thoroughly, considering how delicate they are and how easily their springy structure can be destroyed. See how to do it in the material below:

On the other hand, preparing barley soup with ribs requires long cooking of the meat to make it tender. Fall-apart pieces of meat finally land on the plate, giving the soup additional thickness and an incredibly deep flavour. But it's not the ribs that are the star of the dish. Well-cleaned chanterelles should be sautéed in hot fat to get crispy. Thus, they prepare and top the portion of soup on the plate. We do not recommend cooking chanterelles with the barley soup because their taste will likely disappear, and their springiness will give way to an unappetizing rubberiness.

Ingredients:                              

• 300 g chanterelles,
• 500 g pork ribs,
• 2 onions,
• oil for frying,
• 3 carrots,
• 1 parsley root,
• some celery,
• 5 medium potatoes,
• 85 g pearl barley,
• salt, pepper,
• a few bay leaves,
• a few allspice berries,
• lovage/marjoram/dried dill,
• fresh parsley,
• oil for frying,
• 2 tablespoons of clarified butter.

Preparation:                  

1. Cover the ribs with cold water, add bay leaves and allspice. Bring to a boil.
2. Reduce the heat and add the peeled and julienned carrots, parsley, and chopped celery. Cook all for 1 hour.
3. After that time, remove the vegetables and add the seared onion. Cook until the meat is tender.
4. Remove the tender meat from the soup, remove the bones and cut it up.
5. Add the diced potatoes and barley to the soup. Cook all for 30 minutes.
6. Finally, according to preference, season the soup with salt, pepper, marjoram, lovage, or dried dill.
7. Add the chopped meat and finely chopped, previously cooked vegetables to the soup.
8. Clean the chanterelles thoroughly and then sauté them in very hot clarified butter. The skins of the mushrooms should brown. Do not fry chanterelles for long, as they can become rubbery. Since chanterelles can be eaten raw, remove them from the pan as soon as they get colour and crisp; you don't need to stew them endlessly.
9. In a separate pan, fry the sliced onions. When they become translucent, season with salt and pepper, then mix them with the crispy chanterelles.
10. Add the chanterelles with onions to the soup on the plate. Garnish the whole with parsley.