Nope, sorry. It falls into the same group of thickeners as pastas and rice. Plus if you did, it falls apart during processing and turns into glue.

Dave.

Is it possible to cook and freeze it, or is it one of those things best cooked when one needs it, in your opinion?

Possible to cook and freeze soup with barley in it? Yes it is. The barley will be quite soft when the soup is thawed but it will hold up better than it will with pressure canning.

Here's what we do - we cook pearl barley by itself to the 1/2 way point (about 15 min.), and freeze it in portion size bags. That way it can be added to all sorts of thing to finish cooking. With soups, after opening the soup jars we toss a packet of the barley in with the soup and finish cooking it as the soup is re-heating and simmering. This works best with pearl barley since hulled requires a much longer cooking time.

Dave