healthy laps

Happy Monday!

I thought I would start off the week with a lesson on sprouting. 🙂

Sprouting is the process of changing a boring seed into a life-bearing plant!  When you sprout, you are unlocking all of the valuable nutrients that are inside of that seed.  Many of these nutrients are not absorbed into your body when they are cooked because of the heat that it takes to cook them.  The nutrients are lost before they can be consumed.

By sprouting, you are able to keep the valuable nutrients in tact and have a delicious grain, seed or bean to eat without any cooking!

Sprouting is great for many reasons, two of the biggest reasons being:

1. It neutralizes the acids making it easier for the nutrients to be absorbed.
2. It makes them easier to digest.

Another great thing?  Sprouting is so easy!

I decided to sprout 2 different grains to show you difference in timing – quinoa and wheatberries.

First, rinse the grains/seeds/beans very well.  Then, place them in a jar (I used mason jars) and cover with water and soak for 12 – 24 hours.

The quinoa soaked for 12 hours, the wheatberries soaked for 24 hours.

After the grains have soaked for their allotted time, dump them into a mesh strainer and rinse very well.

Then, return the grains to their jars and cover with cheesecloth.

You can see that the grains expanded to almost double the size after soaking them!

In order for the grains to sprout, they must be placed in a room temperature place.  Place them on their side and be sure to rinse a few times per day in order to keep the grains moist.  The moisture is what helps them to sprout.

Quinoa

Wheatberries

I like to rinse the grains by leaving the cheesecloth on.  Fill the container with water and invert the jar to drain!  Simple.

Continue to rinse and leave the grains on their sides until you see signs of sprouts!

The quinoa will sprout quickly, so keep an eye on it.  I stopped the sprouting after about 12 hours when it looked like the picture below.  The sprouts will be about the size of the grain you are sprouting.

The wheatberries will take longer.  I stopped the sprouting after about 26 hours.

Once the grains are done sprouting, rinse them one more time and then completely drain all water.  I left this draining for about 15 minutes to make sure all of the liquid was out.

In order to stop the sprouting process, place the jars into the fridge.  The cold temperatures will cause the sprouting to commence.  I store the grains in the same jars that I sprout them in, which is why I make sure to completely drain those jars.

At this point, your sprouted grains are ready to eat!

Sprouting may take a long time, but as you can see the process is quite simple.  Instead of taking 20-40 minutes to cook your quinoa and/or wheatberries for dinner, you can simply spend 1 minute taking your sprouted grains out of the fridge!

The taste of the grains is similar, but definitely a little different.  I like the taste, especially mixed in delicious salads, like this one.

Or simply places atop a salad, like this one.

Sprouting can be done with many different grains, seeds and beans.  My next adventure will be to sprout some chickpeas to make sprouted chickpea hummus.  Doesn’t that sound good?!

Filed under: Eating Laps, Recipes | Tagged: grains, Sprouting |