Growing Your Own Fresh Sprouts

You must have done this before! People recommend small Oxo salad spinners marketed in the community as "sprout dehullers/dryers", but I'm sure my large spinner will do the job. I can always line mine with some food-grade stainless steel mesh I've got if the holes in it are too large to hold the sprouts.

The spinners are primarily used to remove the seed hulls. You fill the spinner with water and pull the submerged sprouts apart in it. Some hulls float to the top, and some of them fall through the holes in the spinner basket. There's a video out there of a guy showing how this is done. His primary reason for spinning the sprouts at the end is to throw off even more hulls and secondarily to dry them.

As I reread some of the sites, it seems the primary point of bacteria risk is when the seeds are sprouting, since the process requires a damp environment over a period of days. That's why you rinse & drain anywhere from twice a day to every 6 hours...you replace the water before it just sits and bacteria can take hold. And you always drain off the excess water after rinsing for 15 minutes (I let it go longer.)

An interesting sidebar to rinsing off the hulls is they recommend you constantly run your garbage disposal due to reports of masses of sprouts taking hold in the drain. I might run a diluted bleach solution through it.

 

I used to eat alfalfa sprouts in my salads years ago, and then fell out of it. My most "frequent" use has been bean sprouts in stir-fries.

Now I read of the benefits of broccoli sprouts, I can see throwing them on a sandwich and in salads, if I have them handy in the fridge. Or this might just be another short phase I pass through (which would be fine.)

 

The Black Mustard Seed (left) and the Fenugreek (right) are doing fine, but the Brown Mustard Seed (center) only got one weak little sprout. That single sprout started on Day 2, and nothing developed further.

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I forgot to give them their second and third rinse yesterday...they only got one in the morning. I hope this does not create bacteria issues.

 

Looks like your sprouts are ready to start eating them, @John Brunner , they turned out great (except for the brown mustard).

 

What do you think about my only rinsing them once yesterday and letting it go 24 hours?

And do you have any serving suggestions for fenugreek and black mustard sprouts?

ps: I received my broccoli seeds and my bag of mixed seeds yesterday.

 

I have forgotten mine before (went to bed and forgot to rinse the sprouts, so they had to wait until the next morning. It didn’t seem to harm them at all.
What I do when they are ready, is put them in a large bowl, and run fresh cold water over the sprouts to wash the seed hulls off of them, and once that is done, they are usually well rinsed.
I just use mine in salads or on a sandwich. The little sprouts turn to mush if you add then to anything cooked (like a stir fry), so if I want something that I can cook, I usually sprout lentils.
They are cheap, and easy to sprout, and can be eaten either raw or added to stir fry. I just use lentils from the grocery store.

The fenugreek I get from amazon, and it is also called “methi”. I have never tried mustard sprouts, but I am guessing that anyplace that alfalfa or fenugreek sprouts can be used, then mustard sprouts would work, too.

 

Thanks.

Regarding "methi", I've purchased semolina from my local Indian market, and there it has two different names for the exact same product packaged by the exact same company sitting side-by-side on the shelf, being sold to people from northern India as sooji, and to people from southern India as rava.

I'm going to be in Charlottesville tomorrow. I'll stop by the Asian and the Indian markets to see what they've got. I should be able to get some Mung beans to sprout, once I buy a tray sprouter. I've already got lentils on hand. I now wish I had purchased some alfalfa when I was buying the other seeds. I know it's way more expensive than regular grass seed, but it's right in line with broccoli seeds and the other mix.

 

I have found that the fenugreek sprouts are very similar to alfalfa sprouts, but a little less fragile, and a little bit more flavorful. Once I discovered making fenugreek sprouts, I have not even bothered with alfalfa sprouts. They are expensive and “wimpy” compared to fenugreek.
Likewise, lentils are much cheaper than mung beans, and cost is a definite issue for me.

 

So I rinsed, de-hulled, dried and bagged my fenugreek and my black mustard sprouts.

The fenugreek is very mild & tasty, almost like eating fresh grass.
The black mustard is strong by comparison and leaves a horseradish aftertaste.

I can see where both would have their place on a sandwich or in a salad. I think I'm going to enjoy this.

My regular salad spinner's holes are too large to spin the sprouts dry...they fling through the sides and slow the spinner down. But it's perfect for washing the sprouts off and letting the hulls fall through the holes. I let the cleaned sprouts dry for a few minutes on some paper towels...they don't really need to be spun.

There is a website called Sprout People I've been learning a lot from. They were commercial sprout growers from 1993-2003 and claim to have grown 1,500 pounds of sprouts per week by hand at their peak! They sell seeds, supplies, and sprouts. They have information and videos on how to grown about every different type of sprout there is. They got sprout recipes, seed taxonomy, and a section on the politics of sprouts (including the FDA source of some of the e. coli hysteria I was worried about.)

The videos are informative, you just gotta bare with the guy who repeatedly admonishes you to "Love your sprouts so they will love you." Hell, the owners got married 6 weeks after meeting at a Grateful Dead concert!!! It don't get more sprout-authentic than that, people!

@Don Alaska They have a recipe for Essene Bread, which is made from ground wheat sprouts and no flour. There is also a recipe for Sprouted Wheat Bread, which contains a mixture of ground sprouts and wheat flour. If you lived closer I'd hook you up with some hard red winter wheat berries I bought during my prepper phase.

Thanks for starting this thread and your help, @Yvonne Smith !!

 

There seem to be some seeds that do that.

I was reading about "sprouting" chia seeds, but basically they just soak overnight and form a gelatinous mess...then they're ready.