MORE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON SPROUTS
(The material below is a combination of material from two separate posts to
the veg-raw e-mail list, from January-February 1996.)
Q: I live in a cold climate (Canada). How can I increase the amount of sprouts
in my diet, without becoming ravenously hungry?
A: I have never lived in a cold climate; San Francisco and Dallas are the
coldest climates I have ever lived in (grew up in Florida). A few suggestions
come to mind, however. Try sesame sprouts, or sesame and almond sprouts, for
breakfast. You can add fennel seed in the soak period, and it tastes great!
Another breakfast idea is (short) buckwheat sprouts mixed with soaked raisins or
dates. Make sprout milk, including almond sprouts, daily. Add ginger to your
lentil and mung bean sprouts when you eat them - tasty and it is "hot" as well.
Ginger also helps you digest legume sprouts, and avoid/reduces flatulence.
I find short sprouts, which are effectively pre-digested seeds, to be more
satisfying to the appetite than long, greened sprouts - which are a vegetable
and a lettuce substitute. So you might want to eat both long and short sprouts.
Additional suggestions to increase amount of sprouts in your diet:
1) eat mixtures of grains if you get tired of eating individual grains,
2) add seeds to sprout mix for flavoring: mustard, radish, fenugreek, fennel,
cumin, coriander, dill, etc. 3) make different sauces or dressings for the
sprouts (for variety), 4) use seasonings: seaweed, ginger, hot pepper,
whatever you might want.
One simple sprout dish is: rye sprouted with a bit of fennel seed added,
eaten with honey. It's a very nice combination! Quinoa, sprouted for 1-2
days, makes a nice salad base (eat with turmeric to help digest the protein -
quinoa is very high in protein). Sprouted buckwheat can be mixed with dried
fruit, fresh sweet fruit, honey, to create very tasty sweet dishes.
Q: What sprouts do you consider staples, and what is your experience with
them?
A: My staple sprouts are wheat, sunflower, mung, sesame. I rotate among these
for variety. I also daily grow oat and almond sprouts for sprout milk. Sprouts
are 30-50% of my diet. For variety, I also grow buckwheat, fenugreek sprouts.
Q: Any suggestions re: sprouting in the Summer? What about mold?
A: If you have mold/bacterial spoilage, be sure to sterilize all utensils (using
hot water, sunlight, or your choice of disinfectant). Experiment with more/less
rinsing - see if that helps. Keep the sprouts out of direct sunlight unless
you are growing greens, and then only when they are big enough. Direct sunlight
on jars/bags/trays can overheat the seeds, reducing germination, and promoting
mold and decay.
Q: Any comments on sprouting success, batch selection?
A: It can be useful to buy small amounts from a bulk bin, test for viability
and suitability, then buy a large amount if they are good. Recently I have had
real difficulty finding decent mung beans - 3 batches from local, organic
suppliers were simply awful - hard seeds were 20-50% of total! (The worst seeds
I have ever tried.) Anyway, I then obtained some non-organic mung beans, from
a local Indian store, that sprout vigorously and have almost no hard seeds.
They're not organic, but I don't have to spend an hour picking out hard seeds!
So it is a good idea to test first.
Regarding methods, I would suggest jars (or trays) for greens; jars for rice,
corn, popcorn sprouts; cloth for almonds, buckwheat, mung; for the rest jars or
cloth give equally good results.
Q: Any suggestions on hull removal for buckwheat or sunflower?
A: You can buy buckwheat that is already hulled. If you want buckwheat sprouts,
you should use hulled buckwheat. If you want buckwheat lettuce, i.e., indoor
gardening, then you should use unhulled (black) buckwheat. Hulls should not be
a major problem with greens.
A recent article discussed sunflower sprouts and greens. If you are growing
sunflower sprouts, removing the (inner, clear) hulls is very important - your
batches of sprouts will quickly spoil if you don't. To remove inner hulls, add
more water at end of soak period and stir - hulls will float to top. Then pour
them off. You may have to repeat this process 3-4 times to minimize loose hulls.
If growing sunflower greens, you will be using unhulled seeds (black or striped
outer hulls). You might have better germination/fewer hulls clinging there if
you blanch the seeds for a few seconds in hot tap water (not boiling water, just
hot tap water), before soaking/pre-sprouting them.
Q: Any suggestions on how to handle mucilaginous seeds?
A: Add in small amount to your alfalfa (say 15-20%), unsoaked, when alfalfa is
a few days old. To sprout them by themselves requires special procedure - the
clay saucer method. As the sprouts are not so great, you might find that it is
not worth the trouble (also, flax, psyllium sprouts can be highly laxative).
Q: What about fenugreek sprouts?
A: Fenugreek grows very quickly and is an easy sprout to grow. If you let it
turn green it can be rather bitter, so you might prefer it ungreened. Fenugreek
is good for your liver, according to "The Yoga of Herbs", by Dr. Vasant Lad
and David Frawley.
Q: My batch of sprouts spoiled? What went wrong?
A: Most spoilage comes from: over-watering, under-watering, bad seed (too low
germination rate), exposing the seeds to light before they are big enough
to stand it (direct sunlight on jar can overheat the seeds in the early
stages of sprouting), lack of cleanliness, failing to sterilize media
when a previous batch spoiled, and so on. Some seeds are simply prone to
spoilage: garbanzos tend to spoil quickly.
Tom Billings
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