Yes, you can grow your own vitamin shop!

Growing sprouts is easy, quick, and fun for kids and adults. With a little practice and three minutes of effort per day, you can have a plentiful supply of crunchy, juicy, delicious bundles of powerful live nutrients.

It’s like the bean in the little paper cup from elementary school, but without the dirt. And you can eat your sprouts on the third day!

 

Here's how to do it:

 

1. Get beans or seeds for sprouting.

For this tutorial, I’ve chosen mung bean sprouts. The mung beans are sold dry, for a couple of bucks a pound, at many health food stores. You can also order online. Look for organic dry mung beans.

Here is a container of dried mung beans next to a plate of sprouts:

2. Put half a cup of mung beans into a bowl of cold water.

 

It’s very important to realize that precision is not required in the least. Half a cup, two cups, as long as it all gets used, who cares?  Just make sure there’s enough water to cover the beans now and by tomorrow morning, when they’ve swollen to twice their current size.

Let beans sit overnight. You can cover them, or not, depending on whether you have a cat or extremely health-conscious house flies. Keep them at room temperature, which is very easy to do if you have a room.

My, how they’ve grown! Here they are the morning of the second day:

3. Rinse beans, pour out water, and place beans in a sieve over a bowl.

From now on, you’re going to keep the beans slightly moist, but not soaking wet. The trick is to keep them growing without growing mold. I used to let them sit on paper towels, but I find the sieve method is easier to keep them just moist enough.

Here they are on the morning of Day 3:

4. Every morning and evening, add a little water to the top of the beans and move them around so every bean gets wet.

The beans will start to sprout by the second day. They’ll burst through the husks and grow slowly over the next few days. As you stir them, be gentle so the fragile roots don’t break off in the sieve.

Try one – once they’re out of their shells, they’re ready to eat. I start adding them to salads, sandwiches, soups and smoothies (yes, smoothies) at this point. For stir fries, wait another couple of days.

5. Repeat step 4 every day for 3-4 days.

Day 4:

Day 5:

6. Start a new batch at step 2 so you always have a supply on hand.

Add a little salsa and you’ve got some “live” spaghetti: