In this article about sprouts in all dishes, I explain:

How do you use Sprouts in food?

Sprouts as healthy snacks

Sprouts in fresh juices

Sprouts in green smoothies

Where do you find the Seeds?

Sprouts in dips, spreads & hummus

Sprouts in any salads

Sprouts in soup, wok and oven dishes

Sprouts are delicious in all dishes where you would otherwise use salad and fresh greens.

Fresh sprouts will give you the most nutrition when you eat them raw. It can be in juice, smoothies, dips, salads, sandwiches or as a fresh garnish on any dish.

You can also use sprouts in warm or hot dishes in the pot, oven and wok. It can be in soups, wok dishes, oven dishes or casseroles. The trick here is to add the sprouts just before serving, so that they retain their crispness and nutrition despite the heat.

You can also leave sprouts as pure snacks…but you will soon find out when you taste the delicious, crispy sprouts yourself.

Sprouts are a delicious mouthful for both adults and children. You will definitely find out when you first enjoy the taste of completely fresh, crisp sprouts.

I myself love to eat green pea sprouts as snacks. I found them especially delicious when the white root is 1-1.5 cm long. But each to their own taste. Some love the slightly bitter peas with a shorter root. Others prefer the sweeter taste when the root is longer and the transparent shell has fallen off.

But you can also enjoy many other sprouts as snacks. Sunflower and Lucerne are other favorites of mine.

If you want ‘real’ snacks, you can instead fry sprouted chickpeas with coconut oil and spices to your taste.

Your sprouts are delicious in juice, which you either squeeze yourself or buy ready-made.

You make home-pressed juice with sprouts by using the sprouts just like any other ingredient. To get the most juice out of the sprouts, you can wrap a lettuce leaf around them before putting them in the juicer.

You can make ready-squeezed juice with sprouts in two ways:
1) You can blend the sprouts into the juice and get a thicker, more filling juice.
2) You can use your whole sprouts for a nice, edible garnish in the juice.

Sprouts are delicious in smoothies. On the one hand, they are fresh and full of nutrition, but they are also full of plant fiber for the pleasure of your stomach.

I personally prefer to use the mild sprouts such as Pea, Sunflower, Lucerne, Red Clover and White Clover in my smoothies. Because the sprouts are almost neutral in taste, they are easy to fit into any smoothie.

If you exercise a lot and need extra protein, you can use red and green lentil sprouts, pea sprouts or mung bean sprouts in your smoothies instead. These 4 sprouts are particularly rich in green proteins and plant fibres…and of course a lot of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants like all the other sprouts.

Sprouts do well in both dips, spreads and hummus. In all three recipes, you can use the sprouts in two ways:

1) You can blend the sprouts into dips and spreads, so that the sprouts contribute to flavor and texture.

2) You can let the sprouts decorate your dips and spreads. If you do this, very young and short sprouts, which have only just shown their leaves, will be most beautiful.

If you only have long sprouts, you can possibly cut the sprouts a little below the leaves and use it for decoration while you blend stems and roots into your dip or spread.

Sprouts are obvious to use in all your salads.

You will quickly discover that your home-grown sprouts can be used as an ingredient or as a beautiful decoration in any salad.

As an ingredient, you can replace lettuce leaves with lucerne, sunflower sprouts or clover sprouts. You can also replace some vegetables with sprouts, such as radishes with radish sprouts or arugula topping with arugula sprouts.

Do you love spicy dressings? Then you can top it off with fenugreek sprouts, mustard sprouts or endive sprouts. The possibilities are many, so try yourself.

Sprouts are good in soup as a fiber-rich filling or garnish.

The best sprouts to use as a filling in soup are lentils, peas, mung bean and chickpea sprouts. The sprouts are strong and rich in proteins and plant fibres. They therefore add delicious richness to the soup.

If you would like to have sprouts as a crisp and crunchy filling in soups, you should use them either in cold or warm soup. If you use sprouts in hot soup, you can wait to add the sprouts until just before serving the soup. This is how the sprouts retain their crispness best.

If you want a nice garnish on soup, most sprouts will work, as long as the taste matches the soup.

Food with sprouts stays fresh in the same way as if the food contained other types of fresh leaf lettuce. Food with sprouts therefore does not go bad faster than food with fresh salad. Their durability is the same.

Similarly, the durability of dishes with sprouts will be shorter, the warmer or more prepared the sprouts are for the dish. If you have blended, chopped or heated the sprouts, the dish will have a shorter shelf life than if you made a salad with whole, raw sprouts.

If you have used raw, whole sprouts and let them keep a little of the root, they will actually keep growing ever so slowly in your dish. Serving whole unchopped sprouts gives them a very long shelf life, even if you save the salad for the next day.

What are Sprouts and Microgreens?

Why use Sprouts and Microgreens in food?

How to grow Sprouts in 2-6 days

Can you eat raw Sprouts and Microgreens?

Can you eat whole Sprouts and Microgreens?

How do you get the most nutrition from Sprouts?

How do you use Sprouts and Microgreens in food?

Can you slice, chop and blend Sprouts?

Sprouts and Microgreens in various dishes

Sprouts of Lentils, Chickpeas and Mung beans must have at least ½ – 1.5 cm long roots. Then you can eat them raw. This is because legumes contain lectins which are neutralized as they develop their roots.

Leafy sprouts – i.e. Broccoli, Radish, Sunflower, Endive, Clover, Rapeseed, Pink Cabbage etc. – do you grow normally until they unfold their leaves and the leaves have color. In principle, you can eat them already from the time their root is 1 cm long, but you get a much better taste and yield by letting them grow until they have unfolded their leaves.

The last group is Peas, Fenugreek and Corn. You can eat the three either with 1 cm of root or when they have grown leaves.

Your sprouts are at their peak nutritionally when they have reached the recommended length you can read on the seed bag. That is, for lentils, chickpeas, peas and beans, it is a 1-3 cm long root. For leaf sprouts, it is when the leaves have turned colour. For Microgreen, it is when the plants have developed 1-2 sets of true leaves.

Like fresh lettuce, Sprouts and Microgreens keep best as long as they have just a little bit of root. It’s incredible to think about, but your microplants will continue to grow in the salad or lunch box as long as the plant is intact.

Like all greens, the nutrition of the small plants begins to oxidize as soon as you chop, mash and blend the plants. If you therefore do not eat your sprouts whole, you get the most nutrition from sprouts by eating them shortly after cooking.