DIY – Sprouting sprouts

Hello all, We’ve been away for a bit but we are back with a how to on growing your own sprouts at home instead of buying them in tiny amounts at your local market. You will get more bang for your buck and ton of sprouts, its super simple and easy to do. This process will take about a week, for our batch we did 6 days. These nutrient dense alfalfa sprouts or any kind of sprouts are an amazing addition to anyone’s diet.

First things first you will need the following:

1. Sprouting seeds (you can order these online there are many varieties.)
2. Mason Jar (Quart sized)
3. Cheese cloth
4. Rubber bands (If you don’t have the lid to your jar of choice)
5. Salad Spinner

Starting off on night 1 soak the seeds for a good 3-4 hours. You will need 2 table spoons of seeds per one 16 once jar. Here we are using alfalfa seeds that we soaked in lukewarm water for a little over 4 hours.

We are using alfalfa seeds

Soak them in warm water

After you have soaked your seeds for a few hours you will apply the cheese cloth, pull the cloth taut and secure it down with the rubber bands. Take some scissors and trim the cheese cloth because the access cloth will retain a bit unnecessary water through this process. This will allow for proper straining of the seeds/sprouts.

Cheese cloth is too long

Trim for a cleaner look and better straining

Straining soaked seeds

Once you have strained the seeds place the jar down at a 45° angle in a bowl or a small pot. This allows any access water to drain. Then you want to place the jar somewhere it will get indirect sunlight like a windowsill. We use a small pot and place it on our kitchen table where we have a window to supply the indirect light.

Indirect light

Tilted at 45 degrees for draining

Seeds should look something like this

For the next week rinse the seeds twice a day for 3 days, then after rinse the seeds/sprouts once a day for 3-4 more days (depending on if the sprouts are grown to your liking.) Now we will show you the progress of each day for one week.

Day 1 / Night 1 – Rinsed once morning and once in the evening.

After 1 night

Sprouting tails

Clusters

Day 2 / Night 2 – Rinsed once morning and once in the evening. As you can see they sprout quite quickly.

Day 3 / Night 3 – Rinsed once morning and once in the evening. They should be growing denser and denser each day.

Day 4 / Night 4 – Rinsed once in the morning.

Day 5 / Night 5 – Rinsed once in the morning and let drain thoroughly.

Day 6 / Night 6 – Rinsed once in the morning, harvested on this day. Once you’ve rinsed for the last time it is now time to take them out of the jar and enjoy! You may notice that the seed hulls have been left behind a lot of them. An option that we included  to de-hull them which we tried was using a salad spinner. This helps remove a good amount of the hulls, also another option is to soak the sprouts and the hulls will float right up, and you will be able to dry the sprouts with the salad spinner. Honestly we don’t mind the seed hulls and will just enjoy them right out of the jar. But we wanted to include how to ‘get rid of them’ options for those of you who do not enjoy them.

Storage and ways to enjoy your labor of love – for storing we like to place them into a zip log bag with paper towels to soak up any extra moisture that may occur. Any air tight container will work, we do recommend adding the paper towel to keep them fresh for longer. But if you’re like us these don’t last very long in our house.

For eating we recommend them in salads, sandwiches, stir frys, wraps, spring rolls and to top off any pizza or any noodles. They go well with anything really. Please give this try and let us know how it goes! We hope you enjoy these nutrient dense, crunchy, crisp sprouts.

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