Week 45 Challenge - Grains

This week, the challenge was to use a grain that you had never used before.

I bought a bag of pearl barley last week, having read about making a pearl barley risotto. The challenge gave me a push to actually make it this week.

I was a little dubious about how this would work, and after a quick look on the ever useful internet, found a recipe that looked good.
I didn't have any mushrooms, so they just got left out of the dish, and I added some slow roasted tomatoes that I had done. The texture is quite different to a regular risotto, with a bit more bite to the barley grains. The risotto tasted really good, and the kids all happily ate it. Incidentally, Pearl Barley has a very low GI rating (25) which means that it does not impact your blood sugar level very much. This will make it a very good recipe for me to cook for Jill sometime.

I would score this at 4.5/5 and will definitely be making it again - probably trying it with different flavours as well, just as I would with a regular risotto. And at $1.90 for 500g, it is significantly cheaper than risotto rice. I used just under a whole 500g pack, which provided a large serving each for 5 of us, and a large lunch for Daryl the next day. Pretty cheap really.