Sprouting mung beans and brown rice

Sprouted mung beans (Photo by bodhilens)

I got curious about sprouting legumes and grains at home because I read all sorts of good things about it. Their nutritious values spike up when they germinate and get ready to grow. In particular, germinated brown rice turn sweeter and take less time to cook. It's much less expensive to buy a bulk of mung beans and sprout them at home than buying bags of "moyashi" (mung bean sprouts) at grocery stores in the U.S. (This is not true in Japan since a bag of moyashi only costs a dime or a quarter.) In short, sprouting is healthy, tasty, and economical. So I said to myself, why not? I asked bodhilens to craft a few sprouting strainer lids out of a plastic mesh sheet for cross stitch (which he uses for bonsai, not cross stitch) to put on top of mason jars. Sprouting mung beans or brown rice is easy, although it takes a bit of attention and patience.

1. Put 4 TBSP of mung beans or 1 cup of brown rice in a large mason jar (32 oz.), wash and soak them in water overnight.

2. Strain water on the following day and leave them dump in the jar (with a cover to quicken sprouting).

3. Rinse them and strain water twice a day (to prevent them from getting infested with harmful bacteria) for several days until they sprout.

Mung bean sprouts can be eaten at any stage of sprouting. I let them grow enough to fill the entire jar and briefly boil or stir-fry them. Germinated brown rice taste best and are most nutritious when they are just about to sprout. (You notice tiny white heads.) I usually mix a cup of germinated short- or medium-grain brown rice with 2 cups of Japanese rice (glutenous short-grain white rice) and cook them together in a rice cooker. Sprouting bigger beans seems to be tricky. When I sprouted soybeans, they got smelly before they grew big enough for a stir-fry. I ended up planting them in the ground instead of eating them as soybean sprouts. (They did grow into soybean plants, bearing pods of soybeans now.) It’s awesome to see how alive each bean or rice is. Also, it’s a good reminder that whatever wholesome has everything that it needs to grow into what it is.

Germinated brown rice (Photo by bodhilens)