Beef Barley Soup

Most beef barley soups recipes that use the slow cooker are thin, bland, and vegetal. We set out to create a recipe in which the star ingredients—beef and barley—shone through. To build flavor from the onset, we browned the beef and vegetables before adding them to the slow cooker. A few tablespoons of tomato paste—which we sautéed with the vegetables to bring out its flavor—gave our Beef Barley Soup a welcome sweetness and a satiny texture. To give our broth even more intense beef flavor, we added a couple of beef bones— easily found at the supermarket—to our beef broth base. Most slow-cooker beef barley soup recipes call for just 1/2 cup barley, but we found we needed twice as much to add the proper substance and heft to the soup.