Barley Recipe With Roasted Vegetables

I love a versatile dish that you can serve as light dinner, lunch, side, or a satisfying salad to feed a crowd. Even better, if it works for meal-prep and can be divided and stored in the fridge for later. This Mediterranean roasted vegetables and barley recipe is all this and more!

More about this Vegetarian Barley Recipe

Barley is a great ancient grain that’s been used in Mediterranean cooking for many years–in savory recipes like today’s vegetable barley or Soupe Jo (Persian Chicken Barley Soup), and in sweet ones like this delicious burbara pudding. It’s not as popular as say quinoa or wild rice, but it has a lot of great health benefits. Barley provides a good range of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. And because it’s so fiber-rich, barley is a great ingredient to use if you’re looking to looking to add volume to augment a meal.

In this recipe, cooked pearl barley amps up my roasted veggies, turning them into a gloriously rich and satisfying dish by adding lots of volume and texture. My spices of choice for this recipe are all-natural harissa spice and smoked paprika. Both adding depth and playing up the sweetness of the roasted veggies and earthiness of the barley. If you’re not familiar, Harissa is a fragrant spice blend of three different kinds of chili along with sumac, caraway, fennel, cumin, coriander, garlic and peppermint. It’s very unique, really. And it does not make this recipe spicy, but it adds a welcomed kick and a sweet North African aroma.

What kind of barley to use in this vegetarian barley recipe?

So, this is a pearled barley recipe. If you prefer to use hulled barley, it is certainly a healthier choice, but will increase the cooking time quite a bit (I would budget another 30 ore more.) Pearl barley is more readily available in stores. It has been polished, or “pearled” to remove some or all of the outer bran layer along with the hull; this is why it cooks faster. Technically, pearl barley is bit of a refined grain, but still healthy and very good for you.

What to serve along?

If like, add your favorite protein such as this lemon chicken or a simple pan-seared salmon or this baked salmon. I often serve this barley as the star dish next to other vegetarian items like roasted garlic hummus and falafel patties.