My Mother's Orzetto, A Taste of Trentino
28 August 2026
There is nothing more powerful than smell or taste for pulling you straight back into a memory. Today is a grey, wintery day, and in my slow cooker something is quietly simmering away, filling the whole house with the smells of my childhood. I am making Orzetto alla Trentina, a recipe that comes directly from my mother, and every single time I cook it, for a moment I am standing in her kitchen rather than mine.
My mother was born in Trentino, up at the top of Italy in a region with strong Austrian connections, the same Trentino I have already taken you through castle by castle in this blog, La Rocca, Toblino, Buonconsiglio, all of it her country long before it was ever mine to write about. The last time she cooked this soup for me was when she came to Australia to stay with me for the birth of my son. I still have her handwritten recipe tucked into one of my cookbooks, a page I treasure more than almost anything else I own.
This is genuinely one of the easiest soups you will ever make, and one of the most forgiving. It barely matters what vegetables you actually have on hand, this soup has never once complained about substitution, and the whole house starts to smell like something worth waiting for within minutes of the pancetta hitting the pot.
A small bowl, a big memory
Minestra di Orzetto alla Trentina
Slow cooked barley soup, Trentino style
Ingredients
- 1 to 2 potatoes
- 1 to 2 carrots
- 1 to 2 stalks celery
- 1 small bunch of parsley
- 1 onion
- 1 clove garlic
- Seasonal vegetables, zucchini, chard, peas, or similar, in proportion
- 1 chicken stock cube
- 1/2 cup barley per person
- Olive oil
- 1 bay leaf
- Pancetta or bacon
Method
Cut all the vegetables into small chunks. Fry the onion, the garlic, and the pancetta or bacon in a soup pot until the pancetta is lightly browned, then add the vegetables, the bay leaf, and enough water to cover everything, followed by the stock cube. Once it comes to the boil, add the barley and let it simmer on a low flame for about an hour and a half.
Taste right at the end for salt, since barley soaks up more than you would expect, and add more if it needs it. Serve with a good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and plenty of freshly grated parmesan.
Cheat time tip: this soup is perfect cooked in a slow cooker too, which makes it an easy one for the caravan as well as home. Brown the pancetta first, then tip in everything else, vegetables, barley, stock cube, and water to your slow cooker's fill line, and let it cook on the lowest setting for at least seven hours. It can also be made in a thermal cooker with a few small changes to the method, handy to know if you are travelling somewhere without power.
There is a second Trentino recipe in Italian Passion that I love just as much, Tonco del Pontesel, a mixed meat stew perfect on a cold winter night, or after a walk through the forest surrounding the San Romedio Sanctuary. Rosemary and juniper berries give it that proper alpine aroma, the kind that fills the whole house the moment it starts to cook. That one, and the story behind it, is in the book.
And if you want more...
These two are just a small taste of what is actually in Italian Passion, recipes shaped by my mother, by Trentino, and by more than four decades of my own kitchen since. If a bowl of orzetto on a cold night has left you curious for the rest, the book is waiting.
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