Don't you like barley? As Fomenko said about cats - you just don't know how to cook it! In fact, pearl barley (like any cereals, in fact) gives an amazing scope for creativity. Its neutral taste can be turned into a nutty one, or it can be saturated with the taste of other products included in the recipe. With the help of pearl barley, make too bright notes - softer, or vice versa, enhance them.
Pearl barley, IMHO, should be appreciated for the fact that it provides so many culinary opportunities. Well, you should not forget about the health benefits.
Therefore, today let's talk about barley popcorn. It can be used for salads and appetizers, as well as for main hot dishes, and also wonderful kozinaki are obtained from such popcorn.
The only thing you need to understand is that we will not be able to “blow up” a pearl barley grain like a corn grain. Therefore, the "chewiness" of pearl barley popcorn will be higher than that of corn popcorn.
Go?
Step one: rinse the cereals thoroughly (until transparently clean water) and boil it until soft.
Step two: drain, rinse and distribute with a thin layer over the silicone sheet. We send to a warm oven (no more than 70 degrees) to dry. Questions arise with how long we will dry the barley for popcorn. Professional chefs call either the term, about a day, or the percentage of water - no more than 30 percent in the finished semi-finished product.
Both at once, when you read the recipe, it is very scary. In fact, everything is not so scary: in the oven, 8, maximum 12 hours are enough, if you have a dryer, then everything happens even faster in it - six hours at a temperature of 55 degrees is enough.
The main thing is to spread the cereal in a really thin layer!
Step three. When our groats are dry, we take a deep fryer (well, or a saucepan, a frying pan - which seems convenient to you), pour vegetable oil there (refined, deodorized, odorless and tasteless), heat it up to 180 degrees and fill it with pearl barley (the one that has already been cooked and dried)
Heat treatment time in oil is a maximum of a minute and a half. Then we take out our pearl barley popcorn, let the oil drain completely (you can on paper towels) and season with either salt or powdered sugar.
But this is only the first use case. The second (and not the last) one after drying is to use the cereals for healthy homemade sweets (kozinaki, for example).
Everything is simple here: pour a small amount of butter into the pan (or melt the butter), about 50 grams per glass of boiled and dried cereals) and start frying. Separately at this time we make caramel: I like it from honey and sugar in equal parts (sugar can be taken twenty percent less honey).
When the sugar and honey have melted (stir, do not forget!) Add the fried workpiece to the mass, knead and spread in a thin layer either in a silicone mold greased with vegetable oil, or on a baking sheet paper. We align, and at the same time we draw "fault lines".
Bon Appetit!