I do not like brown rice. I don’t know if it’s the association with my teenage dieting obsessions or the flavor texture combo, but I have to roll my eyes and cringe every time someone suggests swapping out white rice for brown (tell me eat salmon with brown rice and I’ll really flip out on you, but that’s for another time). Additionally, I am not in favor of these “swaps”; what you end up with is never as good as what you wanted so you end up annoyed and unsatisfied. I’m in the camp of eat white rice when you want white rice and eat quinoa as quinoa, not as a white rice substitute.

 But I digress. Recent events, such as the realization that I may need more iron and reading about the numerous benefits of eating actual whole grains whole (as opposed to the “whole grains” in Froot Loops), I’ve been spending a considerable amount of time reading about grains and how to cook them. The first grain outside of oatmeal and quinoa that I’m exploring is barley, which apparently you can serve in the same manner as risotto: cooked grains, with a sofritto and vegetable or meat mixed throughout. Now the thought process here gets a little muddled, but in thinking about what to put in my barley dish, it occurred to me that you could probably fry barley much as you fry rice. Turns out, you can.

The best part of fried rice is the depth of the saltiness. The rice is great, yes, but it’s merely a vehicle for everything else, which I why using barley works so well. Barley has much chewier texture and bolder grain flavor than rice, so the soy sauce and the fish sauce adhere to that and really bring forth a fuller tasting fried rice dish that’s more nutrient dense and, most importantly, void of that brown rice swap.

6 cups pearl barley, cooked

Canola or grape seed oil

3 eggs, beaten

1 ½ cups leeks or scallions, thinly sliced

2 tablespoons fish sauce

2 tablepoons soy sauce

 Heat oil in a large non-stick skillet. Pour in eggs and cook in a very thin layer. Once they’re mostly cooked, scramble to thoroughly cook and spread out to make sure pieces are a thin as possible. Remove from skillet and set aside. Heat more oil in the same skillet. Add scallions or leeks. Saute until transparent. Add the barley, stirring constantly until the scallions are incorporated throughout.  Mix together the soy sauce and fish sauce. Taste. It will not taste good (it will taste good in the dish, I promise), but if you taste mostly soy sauce, add more fish sauce until its flavor comes through. Drizzle about half of the fish sauce mixture over the barley and stir until incorporated. Taste. If the flavor is bold enough for your liking, continue to stir and fry the barley for a few more minutes. If the flavor is not bold enough, add the rest of the soy sauce mixture in two parts, tasting in between additions. Once the flavor is to your liking, cook and stir for a few more minutes, serve hot.

This fried barley also makes a great lunch the next day.