Mushroom Barley Soup

In my recent post about chili, I included the recipe I used to slow cook the seasoned beef brisket for the chili.  When the smoke had cleared from the chili making I still had about 3 cups or maybe a scant quart of broth left from the beef which I froze.  Tonight I thawed it out to see what could be done with it.

It was fairly concentrated so I added another cup of water.  The flavor was different, mostly derived from the spices used to cook the beef, somewhat on the sweet side.  I decied to try working it up into a barley soup, so:

1 shallot diced fine
3 cloves garlic, minced
The center of a head of celery, maybe about 2-3 stalks worth from the inside, sliced
Mushrooms sliced and baked - enough to cover the pan that came with the toaster oven one layer deep
1/3 c pearled barley
1 medium potato diced to ~1/2 inch cubes

Everything except the potato into the broth and cooked for as long as the barley takes (~45 min); potato added about 15 min before done to prevent overcooking.

The potato and barley kind of "gentled" the sweet taste of the broth.  In the end, this was really good.  Needed a little more salt, in my view (what doesn't?).  I did not try to add any other seasonings because there were so many flavors in the beef recipe.