Pearl Barley

Pearling is a matter of degree rather than a fixed operation, and the trade names mark points along it. Pot or scotch barley is abraded enough to remove the hull and a little of the bran, and stays visibly a barley grain with its crease. Pearl barley is taken further — the bran layers go, the germ goes, the crease is largely ground away, and the grain comes out round and white. Each additional pass takes weight off the grain and, with it, some of what the grain contained.

• Food — cooked whole in soups, broths, stews, risotto-style dishes, and salads
• Food — flaked or ground into barley flour and flakes after pearling
• Feed — the abraded dust and fines, and off-specification grain

Barley retains a nutritional argument that survives pearling in part: much of the beta-glucan soluble fibre for which barley is noted lies throughout the endosperm rather than only in the outer layers, so a pearled grain still carries a share of it. How much survives depends on how far the pearling was taken, which is a processing decision rather than a property of the commodity.

Pearl barley is bought on appearance and uniformity: size grading, whiteness, freedom from residual hull and dark specks, and a low proportion of broken and chipped grains. The incoming barley largely decides these. Plump, evenly sized, undamaged grain pearls evenly; thin or skinned grain pearls unevenly and breaks, and a lot that arrives with variable kernel size cannot be made uniform by grinding.

With the outer layers removed the grain has lost the protection the hull provided, and it stores as a food product rather than as a bulk commodity: kept dry and cool, packaged, rotated, and guarded against storage insects that would find it easier to attack than intact barley. Because the germ is normally abraded away along with the bran, pearl barley carries little oil and does not present the rancidity problem that limits products retaining germ.