Instant Pot Adventures - Hulless Barley & Heirloom Hulless Purple Barley

Instant Pot Adventures - Hulless Barley & Heirloom Hulless Purple Barley!

Another Instant Pot Adventure happened this week at Shiloh Farms! This time, we (my cooking co-worker who doesn’t want to be named and myself) chose some grains to try – the Hulless Barley and the Heirloom Hulless Purple Barley!

We started with the cooking instructions on the Shiloh Farms website: Sort and rinse. Bring 1 part barley and 3 parts water to boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, until tender, approximately 40-50 minutes.

From my experience of cooking the barley on the stovetop, there is usually quite a bit of water left that needs to be poured off after cooking, and so it was decided to use 2 ½ cups water to 1 cup of barley instead.

To ‘mix it up’ a little further, we used ½ cup of the Hulless Barley and ½ cup of the Purple Hulless Barley, then added 1 tsp of Olive Oil and a pinch of Pink Salt for a extra little flavor. We set the Instant Pot for 25 minutes on High, with a planned release time of 15 minutes.

The barley turned out great – just the way I like it! The bran intact, and a firm, but chewy texture. For a softer, less chewy texture, you can always cook the grain a little bit longer. If you decide to add the barley to other dishes or to soup, it will continue to soften (keeping its shape) more, making it more palatable to those that don’t like the chewy texture.

This is what I did with the cooked barley:

• Added some to my Tomato/Pasta/Chicken/Seasonal Veggie dish I make every now and then.
• Heated it up with some leftover rice and veggies. Tasty!
• Used it as hot breakfast cereal - heating up the grains just a little, eating with milk and a sprinkle of maple sugar and coarse wheat bran.

I sometimes find the Shiloh Farms grains a little intimidating, like you can only make a certain dish or recipe with them, or that it is complicated and will take up your whole day. But I have found the more I use the Shiloh Farms Grains, the more I discover how versatile they really are - and nothing I do with them is very complicated. I hope you will try using one of our whole grains!