Gerstensuppe Recipe • 5 Tips for cooking Swiss barley soup

Gerstensuppe is a soup made of barley with a few vegetables and a bit of speck. This hearty dish has become a mainstay of our skiing lunches in Switzerland. It’s almost always on the buffet, it’s one of the least expensive options, and it makes you full without feeling like you need to take a nap.

Here’s a simple recipe for Gerstensuppe and tips for shopping for ingredients. I hope you like it!

1. What is Rollgerste, aka barley?

If you’re like me, I never thought once of barley until I wanted to make this soup. I can’t think of one meal in my entire life that included barley. So if you’re not quite sure what it is, you’re in good company.

Barley is a grain that looks like this and is called “Rollgerste” in German. In the photo below, the bag on the left contains barley grains. On the right, a convenience quick soup mix. It’s a really cool grain that gets super creamy as you cook it, while still retaining a bit of chew.

The bad news is that it take a very long time to cook. Soup recipes typically call for at least 90 mins. I forget this every time I want to make Gerstesuppe and only remember after pulling all the ingredients out on the counter. Then I admit that we don’t want to eat at 10pm, so I make ramen instead. So please plan ahead for this soup.

However, if you have a pressure cooker, you can cook this soup in 30 mins. Just be careful to add enough liquid or it will burn (my recipe calls for 1.5L, which works well for me). The barley absorbs a lot of liquid and expands while cooking, which you have to account for in the amount of liquid you add. I have burnt it twice, due to blogging instead of watching the pot. Set your timer!

2. Do I have to chop up a bunch of vegetables?

Almost all recipes I found start with the “holy trinity” of diced onion, celery and carrot. From there, I found a lot of variety. Some recipes add leeks, potatoes, cabbage, even beans in one case. Although I don’t think these are necessary, feel free to experiment. 

After years of dicing up this trio, I discovered the frozen “mire poix” mix, which has changed my life. I’m not a fan of frozen veg, which go all mushy when you stir fry them or steam them. But they are perfect for soup! Both Coop and Migros have this mix and I suspect all the other groceries in Switzerland do too.

I also realized that Swiss restaurants must be using this mix too because their soups have that same impossibly tiny dice. All these years, I thought my knife skills were lacking. But actually I was competing with a factory machine.

3. Stock, broth, bouillon paste?

Everyone in Switzerland uses bouillon paste and now I do too. Back in the U.S., I looked down on bouillon and always used canned chicken stock (is it healthier, tastier? no idea). But that’s harder to find here and expensive (it’s called Fond in German if you’re wondering). So 99.99% of the time I make this soup, I use bouillon paste for the broth. I prefer the Morga brand shown below but use whichever one you like.

If you are super motivated, by all means, use homemade chicken broth for this soup. But if you are making your own broth for a weekday lunch soup, then you should probably read a different blog. There was a time when I often made chicken broth with leftover chicken carcasses and frozen it in 500ml portions. But that ship has sailed and I have other things to do with my time. 

4. What kind of meat to use in Gerstesuppe?

This soup comes from the Graubünden region of Switzerland and is properly called “Bündner Gerstensuppe.” Traditionally the soup includes “Bündnerfleisch”, which is an air-dried beef from this region. You can cook it with the soup or add it as a garnish.

Many recipes swap Bündnerfleisch for bacon, speck, ham or other meat products. Unless you are vegetarian, I think some meat product is necessary to achieve the classic flavor. The easiest is to simply toss in a package of speck bits at the beginning and let it cook with the soup. Or you could fry up bacon or speck separately and serve it as an optional garnish.

Some recipes call for veal shank. I used a ham hock and that worked well and made the soup feel more like a meal. It’s called “Wäedli gekochet mit Bein” and is more expensive that you might think, about CHF 7/piece.  

When the soup is done, you need to fish out ham hock and discard the skin/large fat blobs. Shred the the meat and add it back to the soup. 

5. Enjoying your soup

This soup can be eaten right away or refrigerated for up to a week. It tends to thicken over time with the barley starch. So you may need to dilute it a bit with water or broth when you reheat it.