Healthy Sprout Salad Recipe

Sprout Salad is a healthy salad made with green moong bean sprouts, colorful vegetables, and spices. It is a gluten-free, and vegan Indian style salad full of flavors. Serve it as a wholesome snack or a fulfilling, low-calorie meal.

What is Sprouts?

Sprouts are the newly germinated seeds or the tender roots of a lentil or bean grown via following the sprouting process.

The whole process of sprouting turns lentils and legumes into living plants with more Vitamin C, B, and carotene. It also helps the absorption of minerals.

Mung Bean Sprouts are the most common culinary sprouts used in Asian Cuisine.

Nowadays, lentil sprouts are the part of healthy buddha bowls, poke bowls, hearty soups, or wholesome plant-based salads.

How To Make Moong Bean Sprouts

Sprouting at home may sound like a difficult technique, which requires a lot of precision, but once you try it you’ll find it fun and extremely easy.

It’s so much joy seeing your little sprouts come to life and the longer sprouts grow more proud I feel. 

To make sprouts at home:

Wash Lentil: Clean, rinse and soak the lentil in enough water overnight or for at least 5 – 6 hours. I usually prefer soaking legumes overnight. You can use the green moong lentils to make gluten-free salad also.

Prepare Lentil For Sprouting: Next morning transfer the soaked lentil in a metal colander. Let them sit for 15 – 20 minutes, this way all the water is drained out of the legume.

Take a clean and dry muslin/cotton cloth or any breathable piece of cloth. Spread the drained legumes in the muslin cloth, bring the corners together and tie into a loose knot. 

Start Sprouting Process: Now you can keep the piece of cloth with sprouts in a bowl with a lid. Keep the bowl in some dry and dark place such as an oven or microwave undisturbed for 8 hours or overnight.

Each legume takes a different amount of time for sprouting. Mung Beans take 2 – 3 days whereas chickpeas 3 – 4 days.

Every morning check the legumes for sprouting. If the legumes seem dry, spray with the freshwater to maintain the moisture content.

In an alternative method, instead of using a muslin cloth, you can directly put sprouts in a container with a tight-fitting lid.

Moong Bean Sprout Salad

It is simple and easy to follow salad recipe.

I prefer blanching the sprouts before adding in the salad. You can add raw sprouts as well in the salad.

Blanch Sprouts: Add sprouts in a bowl. Pour hot water over the sprouts. Cover the bowl with a lid. Let sprouts sit in hot water for 3 – 5 minutes. Transfer to a colander. Allow to cool down completely.

Vegetables: From fresh tomato, cucumber to green lettuce, carrot, you can add any vegetables in the sprout salad. To make it more colorful, I have added a fistful of pomegranate pearls.

Seasoning: This is an Indian style sprout salad with the seasoning of Chaat Masala, red chilli powder, and cumin powder. Feel free to experiment with the various other seasoning flavors such as oregano, fresh herbs, or spices.

Which sprouts can be used to make Sprouts Salad?

Whole green mung bean sprouts, brown chickpeas sprouts, white channa/chickpeas sprouts, mustard seeds sprouts, alfa alfa sprouts, horse gram sprouts are the most commonly used lentils and legumes for making a salad. You can mix 2 – 3 varieties of sprouts as well in a single salad.

What is the best time to eat sprouts?

Sprouts can be eaten at any given time of the day.  Usually, it is best to consume them for breakfast, brunch, or evening snacks. So that the body gets enough time to digest them and consume the nutrients before sleeping.

Can sprouts be eaten raw?

How to consume sprout is a debatable issue. Some say it should be consumed raw while others challenge the idea by saying sprouting encourages bacteria to grow so it’s best if sprouts are cooked to kill the bacteria. You can prefer either way to consume sprouts.

However, for those who do not like it raw can lightly blanch or steam the sprouts before adding in salad or soup.

How to store lentil sprouts?

Lentil sprouts have a short shelf life. Hence, store them in an airtight container in the fridge. Line a fridge container with a kitchen towel and store the sprouts in it. The kitchen towel will help absorb the excess moisture and increase the shelf life of the sprouts.

More Salad Recipes For You:

Brown Chana Salad

Lobia Chaat Salad

Fresh Fruits Salad

Mixed Beans Salad

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