Sprouts pack a healthful punch
The dawn of a new year often inspires resolutions to adopt healthier lifestyles. What better way to kickstart a nutritious journey than incorporating sprouts into your diet? Sprouts, tiny powerhouses of nutrients, can be the key to revitalizing your nutrition and achieving your wellness goals. These young, germinated seeds offer a concentrated burst of essential vitamins, minerals, and enzymes.
Packed with fiber, sprouts aid digestion and support weight management. These tiny greens are also rich in antioxidants, promoting overall health by combating oxidative stress. Most of the gas producing starches from legumes can be eliminated by sprouting; during the process of sprouting, some of the stored starch in the legume is used up to form tiny leaves and rootlets and in making vitamin C.
You can sprout a diverse array of sprouts to maximize nutritional benefits: from alfalfa and broccoli to lentils and mung beans, each type brings a unique set of nutrients to the table, ensuring that you receive a broad spectrum of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Since we are essentially geminating seeds, it’s best to start with some whole green mung beans and my personal favorite, kala channa. A couple of others that I have tried with great success are pigeon peas and fenugreek seeds (which are legumes because they grow in pods).
Technique and precision make perfect
Sprouting may look like an easy process but it needs the right technique and precision to extract all the goodness. Here I share a foolproof method that I use. My friend, chef and cookbook author, Anupy Singla, has perfected the technique for optimal results every time.
Step 1: Soak grains in water to soften their outer membranes, thus allowing them to sprout. Soak in ample hot water (I usually just bring the water to a light boil) in a roomy bowl for at least 6 hours to (ideally) overnight. Anupy has had good results with room temperature water too. Most seeds sprout at different times, so try to keep them separate if sprouting multiple ones. Once you find seeds that have the same sprouting schedule, you can soak them together. Just leave them on your counter overnight.
Step 2: Drain your legumes. This is key. You want to get rid of most of the water. If it pools at the bottom of your bowl then your product can get moldy. You want it to be just damp enough to start the growth process. Too wet, and it won’t work. This is why many folks like to use jars with a lid on it that has a mesh cover so that you can drain more easily. I find it just as easy to pull out a strainer and drain away the extra water. Once drained, they look basically the same, just a little more plump.
By Day 2 they will be soft and you can definitely eat them now, although I recommend sprouting at least 2-4 days to remove some of the anti-nutrients that can upset some folks’ digestive system. Usually by day 3 you will see little stems sprouting.
Step 3: The key at this point is to keep your product nourished with a little water, but not soaked. It needs a mist here and there to keep it going, but too much water and again it will mold up.
You can keep a little spritzer handy to spray them with a little water whenever the sprouts need it. Note that dried out sprouts are not going to grow. Alternatively, you can rinse them in water liberally to get them nice and moist. Don’t forget to drain that water. Just use a strainer and you’ll be good to go. And, note. No covering. No fancy dish towels. They truly don’t need any specific temperature to grow, but you can put them in a darker space like an unused oven to get them truly going. If you live in particularly climes, you can also heat your oven to about 200 degrees, turn it off, wait 10 minutes, and put these bowls in.
Step 4: Harvest, store and eat. Anupy recommends shifting through the mung beans; some errant ones do tend to remain hard and unsprouted. I find soaking in hot water eliminates that problem. You can eat these sprouts raw, but I like to blanch them.
Blanch method
- Add sprouts to a bowl
- Pour hot water over the sprouts
- Cover the bowl with a lid. Let sprouts sit in hot water for 5 minutes
- Transfer them to a colander. Allow to cool down completely before using. These can also be frozen.
Here I am sharing a easy salad that I make for my dad. He loves it so much, that our cook makes it on repeat. In Mumbai, you get freshly sprouted beans every morning—no need to make them at home!
Mona’s Sprout Salad Recipe
INGREDIENTS
- Sprouts (whichever you are using. I use a mix of several sprouts)
- ¼ cup onion, finely chopped
- ¼ cup tomato (discard pulp and seeds), finely chopped
- ¼ cup cucumber, finely chopped
- ¼ cup capsicum (red, yellow, green), finely chopped
- ¼ cup cilantro, chopped
- 3 tablespoon boiled peanuts
- Lime juice to taste
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Optional: finely chopped green chili’s
PREPARATION
Combine all the ingredients and enjoy!