Sprouts

Let's get back to the subject of sprouts:

If you've tried them, you know they are a great addition to the fresh vegetable arsenal.  They are tasty and nutritious and easy to grow on the kitchen counter year round.  The finer ones, like alfalfa or radish make a great garnish.  The larger, like lentils or mung beans, can be a significant part of a salad or stir fry.  Mom likes any kind of sprouts to top any kind of sandwich.

I started out using a special made sprout grower from The Sprout People but soon found that a one quart canning jar turned on its side worked just as well, accommodating 1/4 cup of lentils or mung beans to make a jar full of sprouts in 3-4 days.  The only complaint was that our bean sprouts were short and stubby, never getting very long before they started to try to grow leaves.

Then I read that mung beans need to be sprouted under light pressure to grow long sprouts.  So, I converted my sauerkraut press (round of hickory log in a plastic bucket) to a sprout press (slightly smaller diameter round of hickory log so it would reach to bottom of the tapered bucket in a plastic bucket).  A half cup of mung beans did not quite cover the bottom of the bucket.  I soaked them for ~6 hours, drained them, and left them under the hickory round.  Rinsed twice a day.  I used a colander to drain the water. In 4 days, I had a 1 gal plastic bag about 3/4 full of long, full sprouts.  I made a really nice breakfast salad of ~half-and-half bean sprouts and baby spinach leaves from the garden with tarragon vinaigrette dressing, and last night we had a big stir fry with a double hand full of bean sprouts.  This is really the ticket for growing mung bean sprouts.

Yesterday, I tried starting a batch of red lentil sprouts in the press.  I don't know if using the press will make any difference with the lentils as it did for the mung beans but I'll keep you posted.

In the mean time, we are eating spinach, lettuce, asparagus, and sprouts, watching the strawberries fill out, and planting garden like mad.