Do It Yourself: Grow Your Own Sprouts

Fresh crunchy sprouts make a wonderful addition to any salad, and chewy mung bean sprouts improve a stirfry. Growing these fresh vegetables yourself is fun and easy.

To grow sprouts you will need a wide mouth glass jar. A quart size is perfect for a small family, but for big sprout eaters, use a half gallon or gallon jar. The jar needs to have a porous cover through which the sprouting seeds can be rinsed and drained. One way to make this cover is to cut a clean piece from an old nylon stocking and attach it to the top of the jar with a rubber band. This method works well for a jar that does not use a standard canning lid. If your jar uses a wide mouth canning lid you can make a neat sprouting lid from a canning ring and a piece of crafters' plastic canvas. Plastic canvas can be purchased for around 25 cents a sheet in craft departments. Trace the shape of the canning ring onto the plastic canvas and cut out the circle.Place this circle of plastic canvas inside the canning ring, trimming if necessary for a good fit. Do not use a regular sized canning lid because it will be difficult to remove the sprouts from the jar. Place two tablespoons of alfalfa seeds or mixed sprouting seeds in the quart sized sprouting jar and half fill the jar with water. Cover with the sprouting lid or nylon stocking cover. Let the seeds sit overnight in the water.

 In the morning drain the soaking water off and use it as vitamin-laden plant food (or discard). Add water again, shake and swish the jar, and pour off all the water. Prop the jar in the sink for a few minutes to drain every extra drop off. When drained, shake the jar to distribute the seeds evenly along one side of the jar and set the jar on its side on the counter. Every 6 to 8 hours, repeat the rinsing and draining process. Problems to watch out for include mold from insufficiently drained seeds, and seeds that dry out. If you drain well and rinse often, you should not have these problems. In 4 to 6 days, the sprouts should be long enough to be eaten.

Place the sprouts in a large bowl and cover with cool clean water. Add a teaspoon of citric acid (available at health food stores) to the water as a preservative. Swish the sprouts around with your clean hand and the brown hulls should fall off and float. Hold the sprouts under water with one hand and scoop the hulls out with the other. It will be impossible to remove every single hull, but the more you are able to remove, the better the sprouts will taste. Any hulls left on, however, will provide valuable fiber to the diet.

Drain well. Place the sprouts in a zipper top plastic bag. A white paper towel can be folded and placed in the bag with the sprouts to help control the humidity in the bag. Properly bagged, sprouts can keep in the crisper drawer for up to a week. Follow the same directions for sprouting mung beans except you should start with 1/4 cup of beans in the quart jar. Mung beans grow into the classic bean sprouts used in Chinese cooking. Bean sprouts take a day or two longer to mature than alfalfa sprouts do. The hulls are harder to remove. While swishing the sprouts in water, rub the hulls off gently with your fingers. Hold the sprouts under water while scooping off the floating hulls. Removing the hulls from mung bean sprouts can be tedious, but this step improves the sprouts a great deal.