Sprouting your own Sprouts

A diet of seeds will give you scurvy. A diet of sprouted seeds will give you better nutrition than you have now. Yachties, survivalists, and Mormons count on sprouts as a way to thrive on cheap stored food.
There's not much to it. Soak the seeds or beans for a day, then rinse and drain them once a day.
After the first day they've magically become fresh vegetables.
Mung beans and lentils are the easiest to find and sprout.

Eat them quick! They'll keep growing and you'll have too much.
Here's a jarfull of mung I sprouted in the cab of my truck while driving south, camping and building my going-to-Cuba canoe on the way. Some sprouts are better grown in the dark. When exposed to light they start making green leaves. These are fine.

That's all you really need to know.
That and the fact that a lot of your food is contaminated with poison.
So you better find a source of safe water and switch to a diet of sprouts.

Step 1 Your Basic Mung Beans

Here are some dry mung beans I got at an Indian grocery store for $1 a pound or so. The broken ones won't sprout, but the others will. Mung and plain old regular lentils germinate with more vigor than adzuki, chickpeas, soybeans, or any other of the seeds I've tried. That makes it easy because dead seeds want to spoil. When there are no dead seeds your sprouts will stay good longer and require less rinsing.

Comments

[oneaustin]

I was just looking for a cheap way to grow sprouts but got a few good laughs too!

[aluce1]

Okay, trying this with alfalfa and buckwheat. hey, it's what I got on hand at the moment. I might have some lentils somewhere in my food storage. (you don't have to be mormon to be awake, you know) I'll post how this goes with the buckwheat. it might give another option.

[alboz]

to everyone who reads this, author says he obtained these monk beans from Indian grocery , is this beans may not be organic as in mice duds tainted which can give icola virus?
I also see that he has no health problem so can we assume, once you rinse them it is ok to sprout them? I would like an answer by anyone please..
thanks

[popcorn man]

I once read something online about sprouting brown rice, it mentioned something about soaking the rice in strong green tea rather than water. Apparently it stops the water turning "nasty" and hugely increases the nutritional value; perhaps it would also be applicable here.

[cww]

Brown rice has to be soaked for anywhere between 16 and 70hrs in warm water before being able to sprout like this. There is an instructable about it if you do a search.

[Capohanf]

As far as I can find out you can 'sprout' ANY plant. As to wheather some are bad to eat, I think all that are normally thought of as food are safe. I wonder if anyone has sprouted Pot? Some seeds need to be roughed up though. ie. rubbed between fine sandpaper to make it easier for the water to enter and start the process.

[cww]

I've heard you should not eat sprouted tomato seeds and someone on another instructable said no seeds that become fruits.

[wakojako]

You can even sprout in ziplock bags.
lentils and things don't seem to mind

[Foaly7]

Which of the two types of sprouts in this instructable is better?

[Foaly7]

And also, do you just sprout more when you eat all of your jar of them? (Probably a dumb question)

[Foaly7]

I know I'm asking a lot of questions about this, but I'm getting ready to try this kind of stuff, and this should be my last question on this instructable. Could you still sprout the seeds if you store the unsprouted ones with this "Alvin" vacuum canning thing? 

[startree]

oh you are funny! and a cool instructable too :)

[vrkelley]

Reporting back. after trying this for 9MO! Great success! Thank you!

Back in Dec, I bought a pouch of mung seeds from theHindi store. The sprouts take a week and they do not look like the bean sprouts that you buy in the store (or the picture). What is the brand of mung pictured? I'd like to grow some that look like the bean sprouts they use in chow mein???

What worked well: Our grocery and health food stores have a section of canisters for sprouting. Expensive by the lb but a little lasts a long time. Their alfalpha and mixes taste and work better.

[Kaldea]

If you want the ones like in the picture I bought these and they looked the same http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=20530103

[pleabargain]

You're a poet philosopher. Or a philosopher poet?

[solo.card]

So once you've got your sprouts growing in the jar, can you eat the bean/seed too, or do you just pull them off and let it do its thing again... ?

[Asura-Valkyrie]

If I remember my botany classes, that is a no on that one. Seeds have only one set of leaves, a root, and shoot inside to germinate given the right environment. The cotyledons are the very first leaves that come out of a plant holding all the nutrients it needs until it's true leaves form to preform photosynthesis. The plumules are the shoot that starts to pop out along with the root in the sprouting. If you took this all away, there would be nothing to help the cotyledons open. In other words, a dead plant. Best thing to do would be to eat the whole thing, because it won't be growing again.

[Asura-Valkyrie]

Sorry for no image the first time.

[masterclyned]

Im assuming by your plastic growing container that these don't require any light? Would light dry them out at all?

[Capohanf]

Actually there are two sprouting methods. One is the cupboard method where you put the seeds in a inclosed area and the other is on the counter top. Either way the seeds wll sprout. I hear the only diff is seeds in the cupboard don't taste as 'strong'.

[tofuttibreak]

Three days later, I have sprouts! Thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for.

[Aaronicus]

I'm ex-Mormon and I understand the HUMOR in bringing up Mormons whenever you're talking about survivalist and food storage stuff. If you'd wake up and stop seeing the world around you through the BoM filter, you'd realize that the rest of the world sees you as: polygamists (possibly with horns) and survivalist/food storage nerds whose women know how to can, bottle, and preserve. By the way, you can scale up this sprouting plan using those great 3 gallon buckets with the wide mouths that cat litter comes in at Sam's Club. So you Mormons with eighteen kids and four wives take note. :)

[jackcday]

there are a lot of mormons on this site! :D

[Penny]

If you want ideas on other things you can sprout, these folks have a lot of good information (they also *conveniently* sell sprouting materials!): http://www.sproutpeople.com/

[Superninjacamper941]

What are you talking about with the mormons don't hate!! We don't survive off of mung beans we eat what you eat.

[shooby]

Ok, just initiated the process. Unfortunately, I bought peeled mung beans (by Cantonese is only so-so...so, do you think it'll work? If no one knows, I'll repost and let people know.

[shooby]

Nope, definitely don't work. But they are really tasty. An Indian recipe I've been using is to soak for 30 mins, grind them up, add flour and ginger, and make pancakes. These taste similar to potatoes when fried ro boiled to mash potato consistency. I soaked some untreated mung beans last night, hope it works.

[jackfr0st]

i am mormon and ive never had these, but i do have a large food storage, made from things that we make at the church cannery, please dont make assumptions, thank you

[pyro13]

I am Mormon also, and i have never made these either. I don't even have a big food storage either...lol.

[killajones]

I'm Mormon and I have never heard of such a thing, I don't even have food storage...but I got a water storage.

[shooby]

You don't store food? Afterlife or not, at least TRY to stay alive. Jeeez.

[pyro13]

We have a little, but not near what some of my friends do. We would get bye for a couple months.

[TimAnderson]

What kinds of stuff do you store? How do you rotate the store?
My LDS pals, if they store at all, mostly just subscribe to a storage service and eat regular food.
I've gotten a lot of great food storage and sprouting info from LDS sources. For instance the church's own site. A search of LDS.org will find all one needs to know on the subject of sprouting.

[royalestel]

Wow. Never heard of a storage service. Tried sprouts before, but don't do it on a regular basis.

[jackfr0st]

we have stuff like dehyrated well.. everything, they have a shelf life of i think forever. the church encougares us to have enough food for our families to last 2 moths i believe, all i know, is that we could go forever if we needed to

[shooby]

Not if the four horsemen come rolling through.

[rimar2000]

Tim, you are in the certain thing. I am also mormon, but I admit that a thing is what teaches The Church, and other what we accustom to make the members. It is quite logical that is this way, because if we always acted correctly, the church would not have necessity to teach us nothing (pardon for my English, I speak Spanish).

[omnibot]

Am I to understand that all mormons stockpile food? Is this in case of emergency or an article of faith?

[rimar2000]

The Church advises us to store food when exists the possibility, to predict emergencies. When a catastrophe occurs, already is too late to begin to accumulate food.

[pyro13]

It's just in case of emergency. The church encourages us to store food and water in case of disasters.