A sprouting revival
Sweet, tender, nutrient-filled beans, grains taking root in food culture
It’s a science experiment I remember dearly from childhood. Poke an avocado pit with toothpicks, suspend it in a jar of water and wait for it to sprout. I don’t think I ever actually followed through and planted the seed in the backyard; it was more about witnessing life at its earliest stages.
These days, I get the same childlike thrill when I make sprouts at home. I soak dried legumes or grains overnight, drain them, then leave them out at room temperature. After a few hours, the pointy tip of a sprout emerges. Soon, tender white tendrils seem to grow by the millimeter when I turn my back.
Sprouts have yet to shake certain musty associations, but they have retro appeal to cooks whose formative years overlapped with the 1970s. Crunchy, fresh and alive-tasting, they go hand-in-hand with the mainstreaming of plant-based cuisine and our overall exploration of vegetables.
With four-star chefs like David Kinch of Manresa sprouting fenugreek and fennel seeds for tasting menus, and Whole Foods selling sprouted lentils and flour in the bulk bin, have we entered a second health food era?
“It’s kind of gone full circle. My parents used to have that plastic circular tray for sprouting alfalfa sprouts,” says Sarah Rich, chef/co-owner of Rich Table, who recently put a dish called Dirty Hippie on the menu — panna cotta with wheat grass juice, buckwheat, hemp powder and radish sprouts.
“They were big into making bread and making sprouts,” says Rich. “I wouldn’t necessarily say they were hippies,” she adds.
Rich and her co-chef and husband, Evan, sprout lentils to serve with beef tartare and wheat berries to fold into bread paired with burrata. They also purchase sprouts from farmers’ market vendor Brooks and Daughters of Forestville.
In addition to culinary benefits like increased sweetness and tenderness, Rich likes how sprouting makes foods easier to digest and releases nutrients stored inside. It’s another example of how high-end chefs — who used to distance themselves from the stigma of health food — are no longer afraid to talk about nutritional benefits.
“Sprouting is a way to get more of the dormant nutrients from the things I eat,” says Cortney Burns, co-chef with Nicolaus Balla of Bar Tartine. Burns has sprouted since her college days, when she started making multi-sprout salads and sprouted chickpea hummus, and now does it at the restaurant.
“We wanted to give people the same nutrition we were getting at home,” she says.
On any given day, Burns may sprout lentils for croquettes, chickpeas for vegetarian dumplings, and buckwheat, fenugreek and mung beans for salads, breads and garnishes. The chefs’ Wedge Salad With Buttermilk, Barley & Sprouts (which I adapted in the accompanying recipe) is a clever mashup of the sprouts and ranch dressing of their youth.
Fans of sprouting sometimes speak in awe of the almost magical nutritional powers unlocked by sprouting. San Francisco food science expert Harold McGee isn’t quite as effusive, but in “On Food and Cooking” (Scribner; 2004), he confirms that sprouts can be easier to digest and higher in vitamin C than nonsprouted grains, legumes and other seeds. They also have more protein, B vitamins and iron than many vegetables, and sprouted wheat has been shown to have higher levels of folates and dietary fiber than nonsprouted wheat.
After just a day or two of sprouting, dried legumes become so tender that they can be eaten raw or cooked in a fraction of the normal time, such as in Roasted Sprouted Chickpeas (see the accompanying recipe).
You can make sprouts from almost any type of raw seed, whether a dried mung bean or a broccoli seed. Each has a tiny embryonic sprout inside. When it’s introduced to water, it germinates and the sprout shoots out.
“When we soak them we’re mimicking nature in a way,” says Burns.
Sprouting can be done in a colander or a quart-size jar fitted with a plastic sprouting lid (available at natural food stores) or just a piece of cheesecloth. After soaking and draining, you’ll need to rinse and drain the sprouting seeds twice a day until they grow a small tail. (See the accompanying instructions for bean sprouts.) Refrigerating the sprouts halts their growth.
Local Greens in Berkeley grows hydroponic sprouts, microgreens — a more mature version of sprouts — basil and lettuce. Owner Ron Mitchell, who co-founded the company in 2014 after growing sprouts in Hawaii for 20 years, says the biggest seller, after basil, is Protein Crunch, a mixture of
adzuki, lentil and mung bean sprouts that can be eaten raw or cooked.
“People are really into live protein,” says Mitchell, meaning vegetarian protein. “Each sprout is a small plant.”
Though they won’t grow tails, most nuts can be sprouted by soaking in water to release nutrients and tenderize them. The plant-based Nourish Cafe in San Francisco serves a convincing mock tuna salad that gets flavor from sprouted almonds and sunflower seeds.
Although you can use grains and other seeds from the grocery store for sprouting, it’s better to buy them from a specialist like San Francisco’s Sproutpeople, an online com- pany that sells sprouting equipment and seeds (not actual sprouts). The seeds are organic and tested for pathogens.
Because it sells sprouts and other fresh vegetables, Local Greens is inspected by both the Food and Drug Administration and the California health department. It buys pretested seeds and also treats them with hydrogen peroxide before sprouting. Mitchell recommends that home sprouters do the same. (See the optional step in the accompanying bean sprouts instructions.)
Not all sprouters agree with that safety measure, but largescale commercially grown sprouts have been involved in dozens of food-borne illness outbreaks. In almost all cases, the contamination started at the seed. As a result, the FDA recommends that vulnerable members of the population only eat sprouts that have been thoroughly cooked.
Gil Fishman has seen plenty of ups and downs since cofounding Sproutpeople 22 years ago. Ironically, when he came to San Francisco as an art student in 1978, he hated them.
“I’m Jewish and from Chicago. I’d go to a cafe and ask for bagel and they’d put alfalfa sprouts on it,” he recalls. “It was just too California for me.”
Like many others, Fishman eventually came around to them. Sprouts seem to be here to stay.
Bar Tartine: 561 Valencia St., San Francisco; (415) 487-1600. www.bartartine.com
Local Greens: Sprouts, microgreens and other products sold at Whole Foods, Andronico’s, Mollie Stone’s and goodeggs.com. www.local-greens.com
Manresa: 320 Village Lane, Los Gatos; (408) 354-4330. www.manresarestaurant.com
Nourish Cafe: 189 Sixth Ave., San Francisco; (415) 571-8780. www.nourishcafesf.com
Rich Table: 199 Gough St., San Francisco; (415) 355-9085. www.richtablesf.com
Sproutpeople: San Francisco company that specializes in sprout seeds and equipment. https://sproutpeople.org
“Sprouting is a way to get more of the dormant nutrients from the things I eat.” Cortney Burns, co-chef at Bar Tartine