piggy barley hot pot

Another day in the studio meant another slow cooker meal for us, and as the temperature has dropped a few degrees it was time to bust some lovely local organic meat out of the freezer, pork sausage indeed! I love this dish cloth from ohlittlerabbit when i see it I can hear the little jingle “put british pork on your fork” from the 90’s UK pork campaign. Well this pork isn’t british, but it’s happy pig from just down the road and it was about time my crew did a happy meat dance!

This dinner was barley soup meets pork pie… only better, and pastry crust free!

I started by browning in a frying pan:

the meat from 6 spicy Italian organic pork sausages

1 red onion chopped

3 cloves of garlic minced

1 large carrot chopped

seasonwith:

S+P

and a pinch of each: rosemary, thyme, & parsley.

 

Start the slow cooker on low and add:

4 cups of water

1.5 cups organic pearl barley

1 bay leaf

2 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp miso

1 tbsp grainy mustard

2 tbsp nutritional yeast

2 tbsp malt vinegar

1/2 cup of HP sauce (my home made stuff of course)

a little more herbs (the same as the meat blend + a pinch of hot chillies + paprika too)

In a heat safe bowl soak 6 dried mushrooms in 1.5 cups of boiling water for at lest 30 minutes, remove stems, dice into small cubes. Add water and mushroom to slow cooker.

Add the meat and onions to the slow cooker, then deglaze the frying pan with 1 cup water, and add all that flavour goodness to the cooker as well.

Let everything cook down for a couple hours then serve and enjoy!

easy peasy tasty piggy