Barley salad is a fresh and flavorful main dish, perfect for summer, great to enrich with vegetables, fish, and other ingredients! When you think of the most representative summer dishes, the first that surely comes to mind is rice salad, to prepare in advance, keep in the fridge, enjoy cold, and dress with whatever we like. The same goes for cold pasta, but in the same way, we can use many types of grains as the base for our summer salads. Farro, couscous, quinoa, bulgur, are all grains (or pseudo-grains like quinoa) great for cold salads, just like pearl barley! Today, we propose a rich salad where this fiber and mineral-rich grain is the star of the show! Just like rice salad, we can dress it in many different ways, and today we recommend one of our favorites this season: shrimp, bell peppers, tomatoes, and lemon zest, plus a few other ingredients that make this dish a real delicacy!
First, to prepare this salad, we boil the barley after washing it well and let it cool. We blanch both the squid and shrimp and cut them into pieces. We let the mussels and clams open in a pot with a drizzle of oil, and we remove the shells. We cook the bell peppers in a pan with a little oil and dice the tomatoes. We combine all the ingredients, also adding black olives, grated lemon zest, and an emulsion of oil and lemon juice to dress everything.
A colorful, tasty, and fragrant salad that we can enrich with different ingredients from time to time or simply with what we prefer! Excellent for summer lunch at home, it is certainly a great recipe to prepare for the lunch break at the office or to take to the beach and outdoors!
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- Difficulty: Very Easy
- Cost: Affordable
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: 4
- Cooking methods: Stove
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Spring, Summer
Ingredients for Preparing Barley Salad
- 1 1/2 cups pearl barley
- 1/2 lb squid
- 7 oz shrimp
- 7 oz mussels
- 7 oz clams
- 3 1/2 oz surimi
- 7 oz tomatoes
- 1 yellow bell pepper
- 1 3/4 oz black olives
- 1 lemon (zest and juice)
- basil
- extra virgin olive oil
- salt
- 1 clove garlic
Tools for Preparing Barley Salad
- 2 Pots
- 1 Pan
- 3 Stovetops
- 1 Cutting Board
- 1 Knife
- 1 Salad Bowl
Steps for Preparing Barley Salad
Start preparing the Barley Salad by rinsing the barley well under running water and then cooking it in boiling water following the times and methods on the package.
When it is al dente, drain it and let it cool completely. Gather it in a bowl.
In the meantime, prepare the dressing: clean the squid by removing the eyes, beak, innards, cartilage, and skin, and wash them well. Also, clean the shrimp by removing the shell and the internal black line and rinse them. Boil the squid for about 20 minutes, while cooking the shrimp for about 5 minutes. Boil the surimi separately for a few minutes. Cut both the squid and surimi into pieces.
Clean the mussels and clams by washing them thoroughly, scrubbing them until they are clean, and removing the beard. Rinse them.
In a pot, heat a drizzle of oil with a garlic clove, add the mussels and clams, increase the heat, and cover with a lid until they have opened. Turn off the heat, discard any that remain closed, and shell the opened ones.
Wash the bell peppers by removing the stem, seeds, and inner filaments. Cut them into cubes. Heat two tablespoons of oil in a non-stick pan, add the peppers and let them brown for a couple of minutes over high heat, then salt, cover, and cook for another 10 minutes over medium heat. Adjust salt at the end of cooking.
Rinse the tomatoes and cut them into cubes. Grate the zest of a lemon and squeeze its juice. Emulsify the lemon juice with olive oil.
Pour the squid, shrimp, surimi, mussels, clams, peppers, tomatoes, and black olives into the bowl with the barley. Mix well, then pour in the emulsion of oil and lemon juice, grated lemon zest, and fresh basil torn into pieces. Mix again to perfectly season all the ingredients, and at this point, the barley salad is ready to be served or stored in the fridge.
Simo and Cicci Recommend
You can store the barley salad for 2-3 days in the fridge. Freezing is not recommended.
You can replace or enhance this barley salad with other vegetables like sautéed zucchini or eggplant, mushrooms, green beans, snow peas, arugula, etc.
You can use both fresh and frozen shellfish and crustaceans. You can replace the shrimp, squid, and surimi or add fresh or smoked salmon, tuna, octopus, cuttlefish, clams, or mussels to the salad.
Besides barley, you can also prepare this salad with pearled farro, rice, black rice, couscous, millet, wheat, bulgur.
You can omit the lemon zest and use other herbs like mint or parsley.
For a vegan version, eliminate the crustaceans.
