Instant Pot Mushroom Barley Soup

Here’s a recipe for a delicious Instant Pot mushroom and barley soup that’s super easy to make. This vegan recipe is full of natural goodness and cooks up in an Instant Pot pressure cooker in less than an hour.

Soup starts with a mirepoix base

This soup recipe starts with a foundation of onion, carrot and celery. This is commonly refereed to as Mirepoix. This combination of ingredients are the base of so many delicious recipes, and for this mushroom barley soup, it all starts here. Making soups with an Instant Pot electric pressure cooker is awesome because you can do so much with it in so little time. Once we’ve diced our onion, carrot and celery, we add them to the Instant Pot and use the saute setting with a couple of tablespoons for olive oil. Once the oil is hot, we add our vegetable mix and saute for 4 minutes. The carrots and celery will get a bright orange and green color and the onions will start to become translucent. And the smell is awesome too! Then, we add in the sliced mushrooms and continue sauteing for another 3 minutes.

Let the Instant Pot do its magic

After we’ve sauteed everything, it’s soon time for the other star of the show, the barley. But first, we press cancel to stop the saute mode and add in the 4 cups of vegetable broth. I always like to use low sodium broth, as regular broth can be way too salty. You can always add as much salt as you like along the way. After the broth is added to the pot, use a wooden spoon to scrape the bottom of the pot. This is called deglazing and basically just gets any little bits of the sauteed vegetables off the bottom. And it’s a flavor that also adds to the whole experience. Then, it’s time for the barley. We’re only using a half cup of barley, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but trust me, it’s plenty! Those little grains grow a lot when cooked and will fill out the soup perfectly when cooked. Finally we stir in our herbs. A 1/2 teaspoon of each makes it all easy to remember. We’ll use parsley flakes, marjoram, and rubbed sage. This blend of herbs works so well with the mushrooms and barley. It brings a nice full, comforting and earthy flavor, without being to overwhelming in any particular direction. You can also add salt and pepper to your liking. I actually like to use a whole teaspoon of fresh ground black pepper and about 3/4 teaspoon of kosher salt (regular salt is fine). But feel free to adjust the salt and pepper to your liking.

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