Turn leftover brisket into hearty barley soup

If you are hosting Passover, you may well be making a brisket. And if you are making brisket, you may well have leftovers.

(And if you don’t end up with leftovers, make a note next year to buy a bigger brisket.)

You can, of course, just heat up those leftover slices and have yourself another small, lovely brisket dinner, or perhaps make a thick and probably messy sandwich. Good choices, both. But if you want to stretch those tender pieces of meat into a different dish to serve a bigger group, then soup is the way to go.

This is a flexible recipe, so feel free to play around with the proportions and ingredients. This assumes you’re starting with a fairly traditional brisket recipe, saucy and punctuated with some braised vegetables, like carrots and onions. But the basic template will work with all kinds of brisket.

If you want to add some chopped celery or peppers when you are sauteing the carrots and onions, go right ahead. The amount of barley may seem small, but it expands as it cooks into a large amount of toasty, chewy grain, and bulks up the soup nicely. Other grains like spelt or farro would also be very good.

If you don’t have enough sauce from the brisket, add up to 2 cups of extra beef broth — or maybe add a cup of tomato sauce, and even a splash of red wine if you’ve got a bottle open (I almost always have a bottle open).

And then, voila! Two cups of leftover brisket have magically transformed themselves into a soup that will feed 4 or more.

TODD COLEMAN VIA AP Brisket and barley soup