Sprouting!

I had been thinking about trying sprouting after I read about the benefits in Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and Diet Dictocrats, but I hadn't got around to doing anything about it, until I saw a few posts on Craving Fresh, in which Emma raved about how easy and yummy they were.

I bought a little kit from the Nanango Markets, you don't have to get a kit, I've seen some other posts with some great simple systems (here and here), but I liked the idea of this kit and it was only $15.  I also bought some seeds to sprout, I like to support local stalls.

Anyway, the kit is a glass jar with a plastic lid that has drainage holes and a little stand so you can lean it facing downwards to encourage drainage.  For each of the seeds I soaked them first (overnight for the large ones and a few hours for the small ones) and rinsed them twice a day until they were big enough to eat, then put them in the fridge and started a new batch.

soaking the chick peas overnight

waiting for them to sprout

So far I have tried alfalfa, chick peas, mung beans, and a mix of wheat, adzuki and mung beans that I got from a health food store in Gympie.  The funnest part is watching the sprouts develop, its like having a window into the secret world of seeds that you normally don't get to see as they are underground and out of sight.  I have found the alfalfa was the easiest and yummy on crackers with homemade cream cheese.  I've continued to sprout alfalfa for salads and sandwiches and it is by far my favourite.

The chickpeas are very tasty too, but went a bit smelly, I only have time to rinse them twice a day and I think they needed more rinsing in summer.  The mung beans were nice too, but took longer to develop to eating size and then they filled up my little jar so quickly.  They are good raw as well as tossed into stirfries or steamed veges.  The wheat/adzuki/mung bean mix was ok, but the adzuki beans take longer to sprout and I wasn't too keen on the wheat - it forms 3 roots and looks like a little bug!  I think I prefer to sprout single seeds/beans.  I'm not sure how they will go in our humid summer weather, so I will just have to keep trying and see what happens.  I might have to leave the chickpeas for winter though, they are very tasty, so I'd like to be able to sprout them successfully.

the alfalfa sprouts were yummy on crackers with homemade cream cheese

the mung beans after soaking

What do you sprout?



More sprouting progress here.