Phase & care: P2. Peas are phase 2 on my list. Pearl barley is not on my list at all, so I treat it as phase 2 and I would not try it in a strict phase or soon after an attack. If barley doesn’t suit you, white rice works and is P1.
Risotto without butter and cheese sounds like punishment. It isn’t, as long as you understand where the creaminess actually comes from, which is starch released by stirring, not dairy. Barley does this well and it holds its bite better than rice does.
Ingredients
Serves: 2 · about 1.5 g fat and 340 kcal per serving, before the optional oil
- 150 g (3/4 cup) pearl barley, rinsed
- 750 ml (3 cups) hot low-salt vegetable stock, plus a little extra
- 1 small onion, finely chopped, about 80 g (1/2 cup)
- 100 g (2/3 cup) frozen peas
- Zest of 1 lemon plus 1 tbsp (15 ml) juice
- 2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
- 1 tbsp chopped fresh basil
- 1 tsp (5 ml) olive oil, optional, stirred in at the end
- Salt, a small pinch
Method
- Put the onion in a wide pan with 3 tbsp (45 ml) of the stock. Cook gently for 6 minutes until soft and translucent. Add a splash more stock if it starts to catch. This is a water sauté and it replaces frying in oil.
- Add the rinsed barley and stir for a minute so the grains are coated.
- Add hot stock a ladleful at a time. Stir often. Wait until each ladleful is nearly absorbed before adding the next.
- Keep going for 30 to 35 minutes. Barley takes longer than rice and wants more liquid, so keep the kettle handy.
- When the barley is tender with a slight bite, stir in the peas and cook 3 more minutes.
- Off the heat, stir in the lemon zest, lemon juice and herbs. Add a final splash of stock so it loosens to a spoonable texture.
- Taste, add the small pinch of salt, and the teaspoon of olive oil only if you have room in your fat budget for the day.
Fat: roughly 2 g per serving without the oil, roughly 4 g per serving with it. That’s an estimate from the main ingredients, not a lab figure.
Notes from my kitchen
The stirring is doing the work that butter usually does. Skip it and you get soup with grains in.
Rinse the barley first. Unrinsed, it goes gluey rather than creamy.
Leftovers thicken up hard in the fridge. Loosen with hot stock in the pan, not water, or the flavour disappears.
There is no garlic in here. Fresh garlic is a permanent no on my list. If you tolerate garlic powder, a small pinch in phase 2 works, and go by your own experience.
Stepan’s Rule: creaminess comes from starch and stirring. Once you know that, half the dishes you thought were off the table come back on it.
Not medical advice. I’m a patient cooking for my own pancreas, and your tolerances are yours.
This is one dish. PancreasZen has 60, sorted into strict and settled phases, each with the fat worked out so you know before you cook whether it fits. Get the book.