Home-grown bean and seed sprouts are a great, inexpensive source of fresh nutritious raw food – and they’re really easy to do.

Step one 

Buy in your beans or seeds. Types which are good for easy sprouting include:

Aduki – The red relative of the mung bean: These grow crispy, so use sparingly in salads. Ready in 5 days.

Alfalfa – Small seeds, these grow to a lovely mild flavour and look a little like cress. Sensitive to heat, ready in 7 days.

Buckwheat – Likes to be in the light, with plenty of water. Needs to soak for 12 hours and a larger mesh or holes to root into than normal, use black unhulled seeds. The hulls are susceptible to mould so rinse well, ready in 10 days.

Fenugreek – Tall and bitter, prefers cool temperatures. Mix with milder sprouts to tone it down, ready in 9 days.

Lentil – These are very simple to grow; steam them or eat sparingly on salads, ready in 5 days.

Mung – A popular choice. To get them growing well, place a banana or two nearby, (it gives off ethylene gas, a plant growth hormone). The seed hulls don’t move easily, let them float away by holding the sprouts underwater. Ready in 5 days but you can grow longer.

Mustard – As you’d expect this tiny sprout is hot. Use the black variety as it’s easier to grow. Too hot for mass consumption, better for spicing up other meals, ready in 6 days.

Oats – Use oat groats (the , you can eat sprouts raw, but better cooked, sweet. Ready in 3-5 days.

Pea (green) – like lentils, but bigger and needs cooking, ready in 5 days.

Sunflower (hulled) – These give a sweet  flavour, but get bitter and creates mould easily if you leave them too long, so grow for 2 days, rinse well then eat.

This list is not exhaustive, so look online for more suggestions.

Step two

We recommend you get a purpose-made sprouter which are a set of deep trays with the ideal size of holes for drainage, without losing whatever you’re growing through it:

You can also use something like a large Kilner jar, but you will also need to use (and replace regularly) kitchen towels to absorb the water on which you’ll grow your seeds/beans.

Pour enough dry seeds or beans into your tray or jar to sparingly spread out across the base of the container, then empty these back out to soak your intended seeds/beans overnight in water (it helps get them going). Drain and sprinkle back into the growing trays/jar.

Step three

Rinse your sprouts-to-be in their container for a minimum of every 12 hours. Be scrupulous about rinsing in early days to get rid of mould-causing fungi spores on your seeds or beans. Then allow to drain. Be careful if using a jar and kitchen towel to prevent getting it too waterlogged as rot can occur.

When your sprouts look ready (check the estimated growing times above), harvest those which look fully grown by picking through and leaving underdeveloped ones to catch up.  Processing them thoroughly in this way means you can get more yield from one batch.

Once you have harvested the sprouts, place in a plastic container in the fridge, rinse every three days and use within a week. They should stay crisp and tasty  if used in this way.