Slow-Cooker Bean and Barley Soup

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I'm on the 9th hour and my beans are still hard too! Guess I should have read the reviews and advice before I started. The liquid taste pretty good so far but I haven't tasted the rest of it. It's always a learning experience, even if it's the hard way 9, 10, 11 hours later.

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I thought this was very tasty and easy to prepare. It did come out a bit on the thicker side, so next time I will add more water. I used dried Northern beans and after exactly 8 hours on low, they were fully cooked. I will definitely be making this again!

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I am always surprised when I see a recipe that calls for acids and/or salt added to beans early in the cooking process (as they prevent beans from fully softening. I'm even more surprised that more people didn't have problems with crunchy beans. I soaked my beans overnight and thought I'd trust the recipe a bit and added my tomatoes at the beginning. After 8 hours on low and 3 on high, many of the beans were still quite firm. Next time i'll cook the beans without the tomatoes for the first half of cooking and maybe cook on high instead of low. In general, the soup was okay, my husband liked it a lot more than I did. I would make the recipe again as it's inexpensive, healthy and easy to make, but I'd be surprised if it became a favorite.

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It took me about 20 minutes total (beginning prep and adding the ingredients at the end and it was really good for that small amount of effort. I used asiago cheese and it tasted great.

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I used low sodium chicken broth instead of water and I doubled the Italian seasoning. This soup was incredibly thick and while my husband liked it I expected something else. I will make it again, but make some adjustments. The balsamic vinegar and parmesan cheese was a nice touch, but I did not do the olive oil drizzle. My dried beans must have been fresh because they were done after 6 hrs on high.

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I made the mistake of substituting low-sodium vegetable broth for the water and it tasted terrible in the end. However I used only the 6 cups of fluid and delayed adding the additional salt until the end. My beans were perfectly cooked and the soup had a thick consistency. Not sure but I may try again...?

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Tastes GREAT!!!!

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I read all of the other reviews before I decided to make this soup. It actually turned out really great, but I made some adjustments. First of all, there's not enough water, I added about 3 more cups, maybe more, I lost track, I cut up the tomatoes and mushrooms so they would distributed throughout the soup, cooked it on HIGH rather than LOW, and did not add any salt until after the beans cooked. Any bean cooker can tell you that if you add salt at the begining of the cooking process, the beans stay crunchy. The lack of water also would prevent beans from becoming soft. Doing the above, the soup was done, some of the beans were firm, but not crunchy. It was delicious!

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I didn't have the dried mushrooms on hand, which may have greatly impacted the flavor. I found this soup to be a bit on the bland side.

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This was just what I was looking for. Wonderful flavor and perfect consistency for the soup. Wonderful Saturday meal. Adding a hamhock next time might make it more of a full dinner, but I would put less salt in that case.