Broccoli & Barley

We love broccoli and rice casserole but with Vince trying to eat low carb, or “lower” carb, white rice is off our menu for a while. The glycemic index (GI) of white rice is 72. The GI of hulled barley is 24 and brown rice is 68. Steel cut oats is around 53. Most sites say those numbers are + or – 4 so . . no matter how you look at it, barley is the best, by far. We actually like cooked barley. For breakfast, I’ve been grinding the barley to a similar texture of steel cut oats. In place of rice, I cook it whole. It never gets mushy tender as there’s always just a bit of a nutty crunch, which I love. I thought I would still cook myself rice for gumbo and red beans and sausage but I’ve tried both with barley and I may like it better than rice even for the red beans and the gumbo.

Today for our meal, I fixed broccoli/barley casserole. We won’t eat til after the Chiefs game but I’ve tasted it and it’s delicious.

Info for anyone interested, I just checked Walmart and for the Great Value rice, in a 20 pound bag, it’s .035/oz. If you buy the Mahatma brand, it’s .37 per ounce for a 20 pound bag. At Azure Standard, I get a 25 pound bag of organic hulled barley for .0375/oz. Azure does add 8.75% for transportation but in our town, the tax on groceries is 8.11% so it’s just about a wash.

For our meal, we will have what’s in the casserole dish and there will be enough for two more meals (as a side dish) for us. I love those Souper Cubes. That’s the 2 cup size – each side holes 2 cups. I will leave them in the freezer for a day or so, dump them and vacuum seal them individually.

The Souper Cubes are available at Amazon. For Black Friday sales, there are a lot of cubes that are similar but are not the real deal that are on sale. I cannot say anything about the quality of those. I’ve only bought Souper Cubes. The Super Cube website now has a 20% off sale or 25% off if you spend $150. There’s free shipping if you spend at least $49. That all could change at any time so if you’re buying, make sure these prices are still good. You can read their FAQ here. I’ve been impressed with the quality. I rarely have any that are empty. I get them out of the freezer as soon as they’re frozen, dump them, vacuum seal them, wash or rinse them, depending on what was in them and what’s going on next, and re-use them. According to the website, they have a lifetime warranty. They also say you can bake in them. I haven’t . . not sure I would but I do have silicone pieces that I do bake in so maybe I would. They have recipes (click on the recipes tab) and the ones I checked seemed pretty healthy (some whole wheat flour in the blueberry banana bread but . . there is a tator tot casserole but they make their own mushroom sauce instead of using canned cream of mushroom soup. Good job!

Not affiliated with Souper Cubes, but I do think they’re pretty amazing.