Homemade Orange Barley Water

I remember drinking Robinson’s Barley Water squash as a child, so it is lovely to discover that this derives from an old-school drink.  This recipe is care of Rose Prince’s New English Kitchen, although I used some of my leftover sugar syrup from my homemade lemonade rather than sugar to sweeten.

Homemade Orange Barley Water

225g approx. pearl barley
2.5 litres water
6 oranges
2 lemons
sugar to taste (or sugar syrup)

Wash the barley well before putting it in a saucepan and covering with the water.

Bring to the boil, then lower to a gentle simmer and cook for up to an hour or until the barley is tender. (Note – I think I let mine cook too long and ended up with less leftover liquid than I think I should have).

Strain the barley over a dish to catch the barley water.  You can keep the cooked barley to use in another dish.  Leave the liquid to cool.

While the barley water is cooling, zest 3 of the oranges and 1 lemon.  Juice all of the fruit. 

When the barley water is cool stir in the zest and juice.  Add sugar or sugar syrup to taste – Rose Prince says it should not be too sweet.

Now I decided to strain the liquid to remove the zest – I let it sit a while first – as we didn’t fancy ‘bits’ in our barley water.  It was also unclear from the recipe whether you should dilute the barley water, so we did to taste.

Rose Prince says it will keep for a day or two in the fridge – ours didn’t last out the day, it was too delicious and refreshing!

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Homemade Cloudy Lemonade

We have been making refreshing summery drinks to keep us cool in the hot weather we’ve been having.  This recipe is from one of my favourite recipe books, one that I imagine I will still be opening in twenty years from now – Darina Allen’s Forgotten Skills of Cooking.

The most complicated part of this recipe is making the sugar syrup – which involves boiling water and sugar together.  Yes, that’s it. 

Then all you do is mix water, lemon juice and sugar syrup to taste.  The remainder of my sugar syrup is bottled up in the fridge – ready whenever we want to make more.

Sugar syrup

Makes 825ml (20 fl oz)

450g (1lb) caster sugar
600ml (1 pint) water

In a saucepan, dissolve the sugar in the water and bring to the boil.  Boil for 2 minutes then turn off and leave to cool.  Store in the fridge until needed.  In a fridge it will keep for months.

Note: this makes quite a lot of sugar syrup, so we made half this amount – I still have leftovers in the fridge.

Homemade cloudy lemonade

Serves 6

Juice of 3 lemons (I use the best I can find – big fat ones from Italy are my choice, available at Unicorn)
225ml sugar syrup
700ml water (sparkling or still)
Ice cubes

Mix all the ingredients in a large jug and add the ice cubes when you are ready to serve.