How to Sprout at Home: Mung Bean Sprouts | picklesnhoney.com

In the Kitchen: Basic Sprouting

This post is part of a series in which I share recipe assignments from my culinary nutrition program. Each week, we have two to three recipes to make, photograph, and review. I’ll include links to the recipes when they’re available so you can follow along with me if you like.

Mung Bean Sprouts

How to Sprout at Home: Mung Bean Sprouts | picklesnhoney.com

How to Sprout at Home: Mung Bean Sprouts | picklesnhoney.com

How to Sprout at Home: Mung Bean Sprouts | picklesnhoney.com

How to Sprout at Home: Mung Bean Sprouts | picklesnhoney.com

Notes: This last week was all about smoothies and sprouts (you can see my latest dehydration-busting smoothie creation here)! For my sprouting assignment, I chose to use organic mung beans because I had never sprouted them before and I already had a bunch on hand. Per Meghan Telpner’s recommendation, I tried the soak-and-sieve method. I soaked the mung beans overnight, rinsed them in a sieve, and placed the sieve over a bowl. I then covered the bowl with a dish towel and made sure to rinse the beans each morning and evening for a couple of days.

Unfortunately, after two days and no sprouting, I realized that this method was not keeping in enough moisture and the mung beans kept drying out. So, I went back to an old method I used for sprouting chickpeas and transferred the beans to a glass Ball jar and covered and secured the top in cheesecloth. I then rinsed them through the cheesecloth, tilted the jar at an angle upside down to drain, and covered the jar with a dish towel to keep light out. I continued to rinse them each morning and night.

Fast forward two days…it worked! I had beautiful mung bean sprouts, and the good news is that they taste so much better than raw chickpea sprouts (in my opinion). I’ve been using them as salad toppers or eating them plain as a super nutritious grab-and-go snack. Did you know that mung bean sprouts are abundant in vitamins A, B, C and E, as well as iron, potassium, calcium and magnesium? They also consist of 20% protein, which works really well with my more recent tendency to opt for higher protein/complex carbohydrate meals.

You can check out other easy sprouting methods in this video.

Important: You must use organic beans and seeds for sprouting. Conventionally-grown varieties will not sprout! That should tell us something about what we’re consuming with conventional foods…

Have you tried sprouting at home? How did it go? 

xo
Amanda

Photography by Amanda’s iPhone.

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