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Why You’ll Love My Recipe
This delicious chicken barley soup is the perfect way to reuse a chicken carcass and fill your kitchen with wonderful smells.
Do you have some leftovers from your Roast Chicken or Spatchcock Chicken dinner? Use them to make this soup! For more easy and delicious soup recipes, try making this Instant Pot French Onion Soup or Instant Pot White Chicken Chili.
Karlynn’s Recipe Notes
- Skill Level: This an easy recipe to make.
- Total Time: This soup will take up to 20 hours to make if you are making your own stock.
- Variations: You can try different sizes of barley and play with the precise seasoning amounts. If you’re short on time, use a premade broth instead of making your own. Add some hot pepper flakes or cayenne powder to spice things up. Try making your own Italian Seasoning or Cajun Seasoning Recipe and adding a couple pinches of that.
- Tools Needed: For this recipe, you’ll need a slow cooker, a cutting board, a knife, and a large measuring cup.
What You’ll Need For Ingredients
Chicken: This recipe will work best with scraps of leftover roast chicken, but a storebought rotisserie chicken or some Grilled Chicken Breast meat would also work.
Barley: Dry barley comes in a few different shapes and sizes, all of which will work in this recipe. Choose whichever one you like best or happen to have at home.
Vegetables: This recipe calls for fairly standard ingredients like carrots, celery, and potatoes. However, you can also try other hard root vegetables like parsnips or turnips, or any variety of winter squash you enjoy.
Stock: Nearly half of the time required for making this soup comes from making a homemade stock with leftover chicken bones. If you happen to have a Vegetable Broth or Bone Broth already available to you, you can save some time. The homemade stock is absolutely worth the time and effort though.
How To Make Chicken Barley Soup
This is a brief overview of the recipe. The full list of ingredients and step-by-step instructions are in the recipe card below.
- Clean all remaining meat off of the bones, chop up and store in the fridge until it’s time to make the soup.
- Put the chicken bones and the other six chicken stock ingredients into the slow cooker. Cook on low overnight.
- Chop vegetables and store in the fridge for the night, or prep the next morning.
- In the morning, remove all of the bones from the slow cooker and add vegetables, barley, and any extra stock flavouring. Cook on low for 8 hours.
- Add chicken and mix it in for a few minutes until it heats up.
Karlynn’s Tips and Tricks for Making Chicken Barley Soup
Simplify: While the flavours from a homemade stock can’t be beaten, not everyone has time for that process. If you don’t have the time or energy, find a good quality storebought liquid stock, powdered stock, or bouillon. You may also be able to find premade bone broth or chicken stock in certain grocery stores. A good homemade stock is easy to freeze and store for later, so if you ever have the time, make a big batch and store it for future uses.
Serving Suggestions: Try serving this soup with a loaf of crusty sourdough bread, some homemade biscuits, or The Best Cornbread Muffins. This soup might also be a fun one to try serving in these Homemade Bread Bowls. Garnish with diced green onions, crispy fried onions, or a handful of your favourite grated cheese.
Storage Instructions
Fridge: As with most soups, wait until this one is fully cooled before putting into storage containers. Store in a sealed container in the fridge for 3-4 days. Reheat in the microwave or in a pot on the stove.
Freezer: Once it’s fully cooled, you can freeze the soup either in one large container or in several smaller portions. Keep in the freezer for 2-3 months, and reheat as needed.
More Delicious Soup Recipes
Looking for more tasty soups to make?
Try this Turkey Noodle Soup with some fresh biscuits.
Or a Beer Cheese Soup with some soft pretzels.
For something a bit fancier, make some French Onion Soup.
There it is, friends. Another classic soup that’s sure to warm up bellies on a chilly day. try out this recipe and let me know what you think.
Happy Cooking!
Karlynn
Chicken Barley Soup
Ingredients
Chicken Stock
- bones of one roast chicken
- ½ large onion , sliced
- 1 large carrot, cut lengthwise
- 2-3 cloves garlic
- 1 cup celery, tops and bottoms of
- 2-3 bay leaves
- 8-10 cups water
Soup Ingredients
- 2 cups carrots , chopped
- 2 cups celery, chopped
- 2-3 cups Russet potatoes , peeled and diced
- 3-4 cups chicken, chopped up
- 3 teaspoons powdered vegetable or chicken stock
- 1 cup dry barley
Instructions
- Once you are done with your roast chicken dinner and are cleaning the kitchen anyway, it’s time to start the soup
- Chop up all the remaining chicken, cleaning all the meat off the bones and place in fridge until morning.
- Take the now clean chicken bones and combine them with the first 6 ingredients in your crock pot and cook on low overnight.
- Chop up your vegetables and place in the fridge overnight.
- In the morning, remove all the chicken bones and flavorings from the crock pot.
- Place your vegetables, barley, and extra stock powder flavoring (if wanted, I really like a darn flavorful stock) into the crock pot and cook on low for 8 hours.
- Mix in the chicken to heat up, then serve,
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
esmerg says
Can I use pearl barley, since this is what I have at hand, instead of dry barley? By the way, I’m not sure if there is any difference. Please advise. Thank you! Loving all your recipes. 🙂
Marilyn says
What is powdered chicken stock and where do you find it. Probably on Amazon but I haven’t checked. In California we use a product called “better than bouillon”and it’s quite good. You can usually find it at Costco as well as supermarkets. It comes in a jar and is like a thick jam that you dissolve in water. Many flavors
Karlynn Johnston says
Knorr makes the powdered chicken stock. It’s right by all of the other ones in every grocery store!
Mr. Kitchen Magpie says
You can use that as well. We use better than bouillon or the powdered for our stock when we don’t have bones to make it from.
Cassie74 says
I have this exact slow cooker and use it all the time!! Love your idea of stock!!!!!
Gonna try it This Week!
ACanadianFoodie says
LOVE BARELY. Isn’t it written somewhere that is must be made with beef if in a soup? Oh, you young ‘uns just play with the tried and true, don’t ya?
Bet it’s good, too!
:)V
sylviamaxine says
So pretty! I am slowly getting new kitchen appliances and your new crockpot is the cat’s meow