How to use Sprouts in any Dish
Sprouts are delicious in all dishes and they are easy to grow yourself all year round. In just 2-6 days you will have fresh sprouts for your smoothie, salad, wrap, sandwich, dip, soup or as a beautiful garnish on the appetizer. Learn more about your little, living vitamin packages.
Content of the article
Which dishes are good for sprouts?
Are Sprouts delicious in all dishes?
What are the best dishes for Microgreens?
Can you make salad with only Sprouts?
How long will food with Sprouts stay fresh?
Which dishes are good for Sprouts?
You can use your fresh sprouts in all dishes such as smoothies, dips, sandwiches, salad, soup and wok dishes.
If you eat sprouts for their nutrition, then you should know taht you will get the most nutrition by eating your sprouts raw. The dishes for raw sprouts would be juice, smoothies, dips, salads, or as a filling and garnish on sandwiches or in wraps.
If you use sprouts in juices, smoothies and dips, their antioxidants and vitamins will oxidize quickly. So you must eat those soon after preparation.
You can also enjoy sprouts in warm soups, wok dishes or casseroles and oven dishes. In warm dishes, the robust sprouts of sunflower, lentil, pea, chickpea and mung bean are best for keeping their crispness. The trick here is to first add your sprouts to the dish shortly before serving. You can also serve the sprouts in a bowl next to the hot dish for the guests’ own topping.
Are Sprouts delicious in all dishes?
Radish, Cress, Rucola, Endive and Fenugreek are strong in taste. This makes them delicious as a decoration rather than the main ingredient in a dish.
Alfalfa, Peas sprouts, Sunflower, Clover, Lentils and Mung beans, on the other hand, are mild in taste. This makes them delicious in smoothies, juices or as a base in salads. Neutral sprouts are also delicious to soften the flavor in otherwise strong salads or dips.
If you find the taste of your otherwise mild sprouts somewhat pungent, it may be because the small plants have not received enough light. Try making the sprout container brighter after the sprouts have unfolded their leaves. Then the taste becomes more round and soft.
Since sprouts cannot tolerate hot sun, you can instead place your sprouting tray under an LED growth bulb for up to 16 hours per day. For the last 8 hours, the plants must rest in order to grow properly.
The best dishes for Microgreens
Microgreens are just as delicious in your green dishes as sprouts.
Microgreens differ from sprouts in that microgreens are the next stage of the plants after sprouts. You grow Microgreen grows in 10-14. You only grow sprouts for 2-6 days. The extra cultivation time means that Microgreen must have fertilizer in order to grow after day 7, when Sprouts develop solely from the nutrition in the seed.
Whether you prefer one or the other size of plants is a matter of taste. Sprouts are elegant miniature plants that are very rich in flavor. The larger Microgreen plants, on the other hand, are really delicious as a base in a salad, smoothie or sandwich instead of store-bought salad.
You can see under SPROUT and MICROGREEN which varieties are suitable for each of the two categories.
How to grow Sprouts
Guide to growing Sprouts in 2-6 days. The sprouter shown is a SproutPearl. You will find a manual in all sprouters you buy in the FRESH SPROUTS shop. The manual shows tips + seed quantity for the container.
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Step 1
Choose a sprouter that suits you and your seeds.
Step 2
Measure an amount of seeds to fit the sprouter.
Step 3
Soak the seeds in cool water as shown on seed bag.
Step 4
Pour wet seeds into sprouter and rinse with cool water.
Step 5
Rinse sprouts morning and evening with cool water.
Step 6
Harvest mature sprouts after 2-6 days and use in food.
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Should Sprouts length have a certain?
There is an optimal length and harvest time for all Sprouts. The time depend on the development of the plant.
Sprouts of Lentils, Chickpeas and Beans must have 1/2 – 2 cm long root, before you should eat them raw. This is because legumes contain lectins that are neutralized as they grow. They grow to this stage in 2-4 days.
Leafy sprouts – Radish, Sunflower, Endive, Clover, Kale etc. – should grow until they unfold their leaves and the leaves develop deep color. They grow to this stage in 6-7 days.
The last group is Pea, Fenugreek and Corn. You can eat these three with either 1 cm root or with leaves. They grow to this stage in 2-10 days.
How do you get nutritious Sprouts?
Your sprouts are at their nutritional peak when they have reached the recommended length to be mature for harvest. You can read the recommended time on all seed bags from FRESH SPROUTS and in the previous section.
If you cultivate Sprouts for their nutritional value, I recommend that you harvest them just when they have matured. If you have cultivated too many to eat on that day, then the best way to keep them is to just let them continue to grow in their sprouter for a day or two more.
As all greens, the nourishment in the sprouts begins to oxygen as soon as you cut, mash or blend the plants. Therefore, if you do not eat the sprouts whole, you will get the most nutrients from the sprouts by eating the food shortly after preparing the dish.
Can you make salad with only Sprouts?
You can make a whole salad with just sprouts. In that case, the mild Red clover, White clover, Alfalfa, Pea or Sunflower will do well as a base in the salad.
If you want extra protein in the salad, Lentils, Mung beans, Chickpeas and Peas are particularly rich in plant protein.
You can then mix up the salad with the tasty sprouts of Broccoli, Colza or Pink kale. Or you can choose the spicy sprouts of Fenugreek, Rucola, Radish, Cress or Endive.
Depending on your desired taste palette, you can mix a calm dressing of walnut oil, salt and pepper. This way the taste nuances of the sprouts still have a place in the dish.
How long will food with Sprouts stay fresh?
Have you made too much food and are wondering: Can you store food with sprouts in it?
The easiest way to understand the durability of sprouts in a dish is to compare sprouts with fresh lettuce. So food with sprouts does not go bad faster than food with fresh salad. Their durability is the same.
In the same way, the shelf life of dishes with sprouts will be shorter, the hotter or more cooked the sprouts are for the dish. If you have blended, sliced or chopped the sprouts, the dish will therefore have a shorter shelf life than if you have made a salad with raw sprouts.
If you have used raw, whole sprouts and let them retain some of the root, the small plants will actually continue to grow in the dish. Some even say that the sprouts give the salad a longer shelf life because they absorb excess moisture that would otherwise make the salad bad. Pretty clever, right?!
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Are you ready to Grow?
Questions from other readers
Yes, sprouts look good in any dish but sprouts have many different tastes. For example Radish sprouts are strong and go well as garnish in any dish but they do not work in juice and smoothies. Peas and Alfalfa go well in any cold dish but not in hot ones. So choose the sprout that fit your dish.
Yes, you can make a salad with a basic of shoots of Pea or Sunflower or sprouts of Alfalfa, Rucola and Clover. For topping and flavor enhancer you could use Radish, Mizuna or Fenugreek sprouts. In short: You can mix Sprouts into any dish you wish.
You get the most nutritious Sprouts when you harvest them at the optimal time. Some need to have a short root. Others need little leaves to be mature and at their best peak of taste and nutrients.