Crunchy sprouts from alfalfa, lentils, radishes or mung beans are high-quality foods rich in vitamins and minerals. Especially in winter, when there are few seasonal fruits and vegetables, sprouts enrich our diet. You can easily grow sprouts yourself at home.
Light, air and water – that’s all sprouts need to thrive. Growing sprouts means: fresh greenery in the kitchen and on the plate all year round. The germinated sprouts not only impress with their easy handling, they also have a lot to offer: vegetable protein, vitamins, fiber and minerals make them a valuable companion, especially for vegan diets. We’ll show you how easy it is to grow sprouts at home.
pull sprouts: please soak
For growing sprouts at home you need a germination jar and a sprouts mixture, both of which can be bought in organic or health food shops and also in drugstores. The advantage of special sprouting jars with a sloping holder: Excess water can drain off and the sprouts are not standing in water.
Here’s how the Grow Sprouts project works: Place a tablespoon of seeds in a colander and rinse under water. Then fill the seeds in the sprouting jar and cover them with twice the amount of water. Depending on the seed mixture, soak the seeds for between one and eight hours and then pour off the water. You can usually find an exact indication of the soaking time on the seed packet.
Tip: Use the soaking water from the sprouts to water the flowers.
Grow sprouts: rinse and wait
At the end of the soaking time, sort out any non-soaked seeds and empty seed coats. Since these would not germinate, they could rot in the moist environment of the sprouting jar – not tasty and unhealthy.
Then put the swollen seeds back into the sprouting jar and screw the strainer onto it. Turn the glass upside down and lean it at an angle on a saucer. This means that excess water drains away and collects on the plate.
To grow the sprouts, rinse the glass with the sprouts two to three times a day with water (see also the instructions on the product packaging) and put them back on the saucer to drain. You can simply let the water run through the holey lid, then swirl it around in the glass a few times and pour it off again through the closed lid.
Draw sprouts: quick harvest
Depending on the variety, you can harvest fresh sprouts after just four days and use them to enrich your salad or sprinkle on breakfast bread, for example. Either you use the sprouts directly in salad or on bread after the end of the germination time, but you can keep them in the fridge for up to two days. However, it is best to use up the sprouts as soon as possible.
Incidentally, you can completely clean the sprouting jar in the dishwasher – and then start over and grow new sprouts.
Draw sprouts: pay attention to this
The consumption of sprouts from your own cultivation entails a certain health risk, because a humid environment at room temperature is a perfect breeding ground for mould. Therefore, be sure to pay attention to the following points in the “Drawing Sprouts” project:
Quality: Use organic seeds and only those that are specially designed for sprouting.
Don’t take too many seeds per grow cycle: one to two tablespoons is enough.
When growing sprouts, the room temperature should not be below 18 °C and not above 22 °C.
Rinse the sprouts with water several times a day, for example in the morning after getting up and then when you get home.
Do the sensory test: Do the sprouts smell musty? Do they look weird? If you are unsure about the quality, it is better to start the “Drawing Sprouts” project from the beginning.
Note: The fibrous roots sometimes develop a small white fuzz (especially on radishes and radishes) – do not confuse this with mould.
Clean the germination jar after each germination cycle and rinse it with hot water or put it in the dishwasher with the lid on.
Grow sprouts: blanch first, then enjoy
Growing sprouts is really not difficult and if you follow these rules when growing sprouts at home, you can regularly enjoy healthy and fresh sprouts. The German Society for Nutrition (DGE) advises risk groups such as people with a weakened immune system, small children, the elderly and pregnant women not to eat sprouts raw, but only after cooking or roasting them.
The Lower Saxony State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (LaVes) also advises all consumers to “absolutely blanch the sprouts”. In the case of some legumes, substances that are harmful to health are produced during germination, “which cannot be broken down at all or only partially,” informs LaVes. Blanching renders these substances harmless.
And this is how blanching works: Place the sprouts in a sieve and immerse the sieve in a pot of boiling water for half a minute. Then rinse the sprouts in cold water.
Grow sprouts: make your own seed jar
To grow sprouts, you can either buy the seed jar with the perforated lid – or you can make one yourself. Here’s how it works: Grab an empty screw-top jar with a plastic lid and drill small holes in it. You can also use screw caps with metal, but these rust quickly and this affects the quality of the sprouts.
And what about the classic cress? Unlike the “growing sprouts” project, you can simply grow cress on kitchen paper without a germination jar. For example, line a casserole dish with kitchen paper, moisten the paper and sprinkle the moist cress seeds over it. Wet the whole thing with water once a day and watch the little brown cress seeds sprout green. As with the sprouts, you will have “green offspring” after just a few days.
Tip: When it comes to kitchen paper, it’s best to use recycled kitchen paper and pay attention to the blue environmental angel.
