I am trying to make one of the recipes from myalli and its for creamy pork with barley- but it doesn't say how to do the barley except follow package.... Well I bought it in the bulk section and so I don't have any directions. Does anyone know how to make barley???

Well I made it like rice- I added chicken broth and tomato juice to it. It was yummy!!

 LOL, I've been here too!  Follow package directions the recipe says.  Well sometimes the package directions call for making an entire cup of something and you're only supposed to have 1/3 cup.  Sometimes it's really hard to follow.

Preparation instructions from a bag of Pearl Barley.  Bear with me for a minute or two.  All of this is printed on the bag:

Rinse well and make sure you pick out any stones :-)  This product can be cooked in large quantities and frozen for later use. 

To 2 cups of barley add 8 cups of water.  Cook for 30-45 minutes in a large volume of rapidly boiling water. Drain.  Rinse with cold water and reheat as necessary.  Barley increases 4 times in bulk.

Wash 1 cup barley and drain. Soak overnight in 3 cups of water.  Put barley and the water in which it was soaked into a double boiler and steam for 3 hours. 

Wash 1 Tbsp barley and drain. Stir barley into 2 cups boiling water and cook 2 hours.  Drain and reserve barley water.  For infant feeding, this barley water may be mixed with milk or formula.

*** End barley bag ***

You can see that if you followed the first set of instructions, you would end up with 8 cups of cooked barley, enough to feed an army.  However .. it can be frozen for later use :-)

I put a 1/4 cup of barley in a large saucepan with probably 4-5 cups of water, bring it to a boil, and let it simmer away until it's soft enough for my taste.  Usually that takes about 40 minutes.  Just like pasta, the amount of water needs to be copious.

More often than not, I substitute wild rice :-)

Mary