Using the steam basket

Two weeks ago I wrote about purchasing a steam basket, or as it's called in Hebrew translated into English, a 'collapsible steamer lily'. Today was the first chance that I had to use it, in order to cook pearl barley with chicken, but keeping the barley separate.

This is the cooking tray with the basket and the chicken. On the chicken has been poured fig syrup and I've scattered on them purple onion slices that are supposed to be slightly sweeter than the regular onion (although they cost the same). In the top left hand corner is the steam basket and if one looks closely, the pearl barley can be seen inside the basket.

After adding liquid and cooking for 2.5 hours, the chicken was sublime, but I was more interested in the pearl barley. It seems that I put too much barley in the basket as the upper layer wasn't cooked. OK, I'll remember this for next time. Also, the chicken wasn't particularly brown as it was a few weeks ago. It seems that rolling the chicken in 'date honey' (ie 'honey' derived from dates) and olive oil is preferable to simply pouring the date honey and olive oil on top. This time I forgot the almonds.

Here's the same tray after cooking. It can be seen that the barley has risen higher in the basket, as the lower grains have swelled with the cooking liquid, but the top most grains are uncooked. After taking the basket out of the tray and transferring the barley to a normal pyrex dish, I added more liquid in the hope that over the next few days the under-cooked grains will continue to absorb liquid and improve. Taste wise, the barley was fine, but not as spectacular as the first time when I tried this (without the basket).

I wonder which is better from a nutrional point of view, pearl barley or quinoa. This site sets out various comparisons:

• Quinoa provides a higher percentage of protein, vitamins and minerals.
• Barley is lower in calories than quinoa.
• Barley provides more fiber than quinoa.
• Barley has a better glycemic index than quinoa.

More importantly for me, it appears that raw pearl barley has half the potassium content of raw quinoa on an equal weight basis (it also has only half the iron and magnesium, so it's not a complete win). So it looks like I'm going to switch to pearl barley whilst still cooking quinoa for my wife (whom I've converted) and family, or maybe I'll eat both at the same time.

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