Apartment Homesteading: Growing Sprouts in a Milk/Juice Carton
Materials: Empty Carton, Funnel, Scissors, dry beans |
Instead of a shed update, here's the first article of I what I hope will be a fairly regular series I'm calling apartment homesteading. Subjects may include horticulture, food preservation, alcohol fermentation, animal husbandry, materials re-purposing, function stacking and whatever else we can come up with. All these activities will be extremely small scale, typically low overhead and low maintenance.
A sprout is a germinated seed that has grown for 3-10 days. You might also call it a seedling. Sprouts are tasty and healthy additions to salads, sandwiches and all kinds of cooked dishes. Some common sprouts are mung bean and alfalfa. If you do a google search for "health benefits of sprouts," there are a myriad of articles that come up with loads of good information. Here's a distillation of what I have gathered:
Seeds and Beans and Nutrients
- The Good
- A seed/bean is chock full of energy and nutrients. It has everything a plant needs to survive for the early part of it's life. This is why when you're starting seedlings they don't need compost or very nutrient rich soil. The seed includes kind of plant survival kit.
- The Bad
Step 1: Pour Mung beans into a carton. Hint: Use a funnel |
- The Good
- Cooking seeds/beans can help us by performing part of the digestion process for us.
- The Bad
- Seeds/Beans lose nutritional value when cooked. This typically occurs when seeds/beans are boiled because the nutrients leach into the water which is typically disposed of.
- Cooked seeds and beans can still cause gastrointestinal distress because of various indigestible proteins and sugars.
- Cooking beans/seeds still takes energy albeit negligible and not your body's.
- The Good
- Sprouting seeds/beans performs part of the digestion process for us.
- Nutritional value is largely retained.
- Gastrointestinal distress is reduced because some of those troublesome proteins and sugars and broken down and used by the young seedling.
- (Subjective) Sprouted seeds and beans taste better than cooked seeds and beans
- The Bad
This video explains the process I use to sprout my beans and seeds. I'll outline the steps below:
Materials/Tools
- Rinsed out juice/milk carton. We typically use a 1/2 gallon almond milk carton.
- Funnel
- Scissors
- 1/2 cup of mung beans. In the Austin area you can get mung beans for a reasonable price at Sprouts or Fiesta. If you're feeling more adventurous you can try other types of seeds/beans.
- Use the funnel to pour the mung beans into the carton.
- Cut off the top four corners of the carton.
- Fill the carton with water and let the beans soak for 10-12 hours.
- Twice a day fill the carton with water and then let it drain out through the holes in the top.
- After five days, cut open the carton and remove the sprouted beans.
- Rinse beans well before serving.
Step 3b: Let the beans soak for 10-12 hours. Hint: Use labels |
Step 4: Fill the cartons with water twice a day and drain them |
Ingredients
The Steps
- Heat the oil in a large sauce pan or wok.
- Saute the onion under high heat.
- Add the garlic when the onion is translucent.
- Move the onion and garlic to a bowl after they begin to brown.
- Toss the mung beans sprouts into pan/wok and cook for 45 seconds.
- Add the mung beans to the onion and garlic mixture.
- Add soy sauce to taste.
- Serve with rice or noodles
Step 5: After five days cut open the carton |
Variations/Additions
- Ginger
- Tofu
- Egg
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