I never realised beansprouts were mung beans, despite eating them at least once a week. I bet not many other people know that either, when you consider how bad a reputation mung beans have as a staple of itchy, scratchy eco lifestyles.

The trouble with beansprouts, though, is that when you buy then in the supermarket they come in huge bags, of which two of us can only get through about half. It’s not necessarily a problem as the chickens eat the rest, so they don’t go to waste, but still I’d rather only have what we need.

So we’ve bought a seed sprouter and today we started growing our own.

A sprouter is a plastic tiered contraption with several layers like a little steamer on which you lay out your beans as they grow. You rinse them through with water twice a day, and in three to six days your seeds are ready for eating.

Monday night is stir fry night, so that fits well with our schedule.

The first stage, though, is to put them in a jar and soak them in water overnight, so the picture above shows our desertspoonful of mung beans doing just that. We’ll leave them until tomorrow, and then we’ll start using our sprouter.

Related posts:

1. The seed sprouter has worked its magic… sort of
2. Our beansprouts are stunted
3. Lazy broad beans and cat grass