Sprouting with Joy

I love sprouts. They add a wonderful crunch and herbaceous character to salads, soups, sandwiches, stir fries and on and on. Yet North American supermarkets tend to stock only two kinds: the mung bean sprout commonly found in fast food stir fries, and the grassy alfalfa. Maybe if you're lucky, you'll find pea sprouts at a high end grocery. It's frustrating to read Japanese cooking magazines which feature recipes that incorporate a wide range of sprouts, very few of which I can buy here.

So it was a delight to stumble across a dozen or so (safe) sprouting bean varieties sold in pouches at a health food store. The instructions seemed easy enough. I picked up a packet of Mumm's daikon seeds for my first sprouting attempt.

All I needed was a wide-rimmed jar and some mesh netting fastened to the jar opening with some elastic bands. A teaspoon of seeds were put in. They were soaked for a few hours. Then they were rinsed and drained twice a day, using the mesh as a sieve. In less than a week, I had long, stringy daikon sprouts filling up most of the jar.

Although I expected it, it was still a bit of a surprise that the sprout had so much of the daikon flavor, even in the plant's infancy. I suppose the essence of a thing will usually be present from birth.

I need to get a bigger jar.