Miraculous Sprouts

Long-stem sprouts, like mung or soybeans, grow best in a colander or new red clay pot like you’d find at a nursery. They get a little different treatment.

1. Soak

I started with 3 cups of dry, hard winter wheat berries, 2 cups of lentils and 2 cups of mung beans to grow three different sprouts. Using a colander I rinsed the seeds and picked out the broken ones. Then I put each type of seed in a separate bowl and covered them with water 2—3 times over. I let them soak overnight, about 8—12 hours.

2. Rinse and Drain

In the morning I drained them, poured the wheat into a clean 2-quart jar and the lentils into two clean 1-quart jars and covered them with nylon nets, secured with the jar rings.

The mung beans went into a stainless steel colander lined with a paper. I put the colander in a bowl high enough so that the beans would be above any water that dripped off them. The seeds and stems can’t be sitting in water. I covered the colander with a kitchen towel.

After 8 hours I rinsed the seeds with a generous dose of cold water. I drained the jars and put them in my dish drainer, so every drop of extra water would run out. I drenched the mung bean sprouts in the colander, allowing the surplus water to drain into the sink, trying not to disturb the seeds. After that I rinsed the sprouts every 4—8 hours. For the record, I never got up at night to rinse them but I do I know that some people take them to work!

3. Harvest and Refrigerate

After one day I started seeing budding spots on the wheat.

On the second day the lentils and mung beans sent out tentative little feelers. Exciting changes. Each day I tasted the sprouts.

By day 2 the wheat sprouts had budding rootlets and a sprout that was about half as long as the grain. They tasted sweet. It was time to harvest and time to make Essene Sprouted Wheat Bread (see “Cooking Fresh” page 13.) Wheat sprouts continue to grow in the refrigerator, so they have to be used right away.

By the end of the third day, the lentils had sprouts that were about twice as long as the seed—that is, if you straightened them out, because they were curled. They were ready for harvest, so I patted them dry and put them in a plastic container in the refrigerator, where they will keep well for a few days.

I let the mung beans grow until the sixth day, when they started showing leaves. On the last day, I rinsed them every 4 hours, so the stems would be crisp and juicy. By harvest time they were densely packed, with 2-inch stems, seed heads and little emergent leaves. They looked just like sprouts at the Chinese market. So exciting. I patted them dry and lightly packed them into a quart Ziploc bag. They keep up to a week refrigerated.

Sprouts and Food Safety

The Chinese have been eating sprouts for 5,000 years but now the US Food and Drug Administration considers them hazardous. The FDA recommends buying inspected seed, soaking the seeds and everything else in a bleach solution and, even then, not serving raw sprouts to children, oldsters or other susceptible groups. Yikes!

Scary, but how have the Chinese done it for all those thousands of years? Cooking. The Chinese never eat raw sprouts, and they never eat raw vegetables. The FDA cautions are for raw sprouts. Cooking for just 1 minute at 160° kills any pathogens with very little loss of some nutrients and an actual gain in others. So to enjoy safe sprouts without worry, cook the sprouts as in the delicious recipes below.

Get Sprouting

If you don’t have room or water for a garden, if it’s too cold or too hot outside, if you don’t want to wait months pulling weeds and watching for insect pests, you can still harvest fresh, delicious, nutrient-dense foods right on your kitchen counter. It doesn’t get more local than that.

Sprout Cautions

Growing Seed Sprouts at Home, publication 8151 from the University of California at Davis, lists these cautions:

Since 1995, raw sprouts have emerged as a significant source of food-borne illness in the United States. These illnesses have involved the pathogenic bacteria Salmonella and E. coli 0157:H7. Alfalfa, clover and mung bean sprouts have been involved most frequently, but all raw sprouts may pose a risk.

For most outbreaks, the source of contamination appears to have been the seed. Even if the seed is contaminated, pathogen levels are typically very low, so contamination can easily be missed depending on the nature of the seed-testing program. The best conditions for sprouting are also ideal for multiplication of pathogenic bacteria if they happen to be present on the seed. Even if the seed are only lightly contaminated. Salmonella and E. coli 0157:H7 levels can increase to millions of cells per serving during the sprouting process.

Because illnesses from these organisms can range from mild to extremely unpleasant and even to very severe in susceptible persons^ the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the California Department of Health Services have issued warnings to consumers.