Cabbage soup with bacon and pearl barley

1. We put the pearl barley immediately to cook, which was previously thoroughly washed. Cook in a small amount of salted water. In order for it to boil, immediately add a teaspoon of vegetable oil. For beauty, add ground turmeric.
2. While the pearl barley is cooking, chop the onion finely, quickly fry it in vegetable oil in a frying pan until golden brown.
3. Add thin strips of bacon to the onion in the pan, up to three centimeters in size. Fry together also quickly, add pieces of tomatoes. In this case, the tomatoes were with a thin skin, it was not necessary to remove it.
4. Chop the white cabbage, you can in large pieces. Salt to taste, add a little citric acid if the tomatoes are too sweet. We put the chopped cabbage in a frying pan with onions with bacon and tomatoes, add a little cardamom, paprika and bay leaf, close the lid. Simmer over low heat.
5. There is no need to add water at all, the hodgepodge is stewed in its own juice. It is only necessary to open the lid periodically and stir so that there is a uniform coloring. In a frying pan with a thick bottom, the bottom layer may burn, so for a while it is necessary to completely turn off the heating. The dish comes by itself due to the accumulated heat.
6. When the pearl barley has been cooked separately for about 45 minutes, we overload it to the hodgepodge and leave it to sweat with the lid closed until ready.
7. You can serve it as an independent dish, equally good at any time of the day, even for lunch, even for dinner.

Total cooking time is 1 hour 20 minutes in a deep thick-walled frying pan. In other dishes, the time may vary.