My experiments with sprouting legumes | Hacker News Reader

My experiments with sprouting legumes

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112 pointskoolhead1775 comments

It is common in parts of India to make Mung Bean Pancakes (1). Soak the Mung Beans in more than three times the volume, for 4 hours. Throw the water away, grind the mung beans to a puree, and let it ferment overnight, and prepare it on a girdle as you would cook Pancakes.

My value add in this is that, between the soak and grind phases, I put the beans in the fridge for 24 hours tied in a wet cloth, and let it sprout before grinding it. Soak > Sprout > Grind > Ferment > Pancake. The sprouting increases the amount of nutrients marginally (2)(3).

One of the common and widely used ingredient to counter the gas-producing nature of legume dishes, is Asafoetida (aka Hing). (4)

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesarattu

(2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4573095/

(3) https://www.echocommunity.org/en/resources/bcee9e2a-f494-4b5...

(4) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-54617077

Very cool! Koreans also do something similar with mung beans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bindae-tteok

I'm going to have to give pesarattu a try. I love how crispy it looks, and some of the recipes I've found with added ginger, chilies, and hing sound like a delight.

If you'd like to eliminate gas formation caused by legumes, you need only change the water (preferably twice) during the cooking process. Undigestible sugars (AKA soluble fiber) are the primary culprit for this property of most legumes. Conveniently, they dissolve when heated in water. However, legumes begin very hard and it takes a lot of boiling to release all of those gas-forming sugars. If you have a legume that takes two hours to soften by boiling, try changing the water once after an hour, and again after they're fully boiled. (And rinse thoroughly.) Then you can use them in any dish and generally suffer little to no gas after consuming. Enjoy!

I assume you're referring to raffinose?

In Indian cooking (which uses a lot of legumes) our solution is to soak them overnight and discard the water - cuts down the raffinose and overall cooking time. We also almost universally cook them in pressure cookers - even the toughest beans cook rapidly in a pressure cooker if soaked - maybe 15 minutes?

Also, don't eat legumes that have just been soaked or that are still cooking, you'll get a huge stomachache. I learned this the hard way while tasting kidney beans while they were cooking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_bean#Toxicity

It can be worse than a stomach ache.

"As few as five raw beans or a single undercooked kidney bean can cause severe nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal pains."

That's nuts, though I don't understand why undercooked beans would be worse than raw beans, and not the other way round. Maybe the two claims are from different sources.

Your digestive system may not get at the raw bean as quickly or at all.

Oh man I got poisoned by some bought canned kidney beans used in a salad, and it wasn't pretty.

They were probably spoiled. Canned beans are pressure cooked.

Yeah, I thought canned beans would be cooked and fine. But I guess one bad one can get through.

that's why the pythagoreans where against beans.

All legumes are toxic by default, and some are very toxic.

Leguminosae is a big family and they are masters on alkaloid design. This is the main reason why we made our bread from cereals and not from legume flour. Cereals are more safe to manipulate because their defense is physical, not chemical.

Or simply add a strip of konbu. That works in an electric pressure-cooker, which makes beans even faster to prepare. It also works for cattle who are prone to bloat.

What's the mechanism? Sounds unlikely to do much.

Kombu is a sea vegetable which contains the enzyme alpha-galactosidase. This enzyme breaks down the oligosaccharides in beans.

https://truefoodconcepts.com/cook-dried-beans/

A quick google of "kombu beans gas" turns up plenty of results.

There are two commonly-cited ideas: enzymes and anti-methanogenic compounds. I think it works too fast for enzymes to be the full story.

From https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

>Some red seaweeds are anti-methanogenic, particularly the genus Asparagopsis, due to their capacity to synthesize and encapsulate halogenated CH4 analogues, such as bromoform and dibromochloromethane

It cites studies that suggest the mechanism that's so effective in cattle, and presumably the same in humans, is that the seaweed contains a good combination of compounds which inhibit methane production in anaerobic bacteria in the gut.

Unfortunately, oligosaccharides (including raffinose, stachyose, ciceritol, and verbascose commonly found in legumes and often result in flatulence in humans) are heat stable, no matter how long you cook them. 2 processes that help you breakdown these include germination and fermentation. Other herbs like hing, epazote etc only allieviate the symptoms a little.

This reminds me of my childhood when my mother would sprout green among dal, try to force feed me while trying to tell me the health benefits.

Now I live in Europe and overpay for sprouts in vegan restaurants. I guess my mother was ahead of curve.

Haha!! She truly was ahead of the curve. Same - with my dad and moringa leaves.

One minute of silence for all the Moringa saplings that I have killed in its pots. Easy came, easy go, like true rebels do.

Where do you live? In Germany you can buy fresh sprouts very cheap in any Supermarket even in Aldi. It's about 1 Euro per 250 gramm, and even cheaper in any asian grocery store.

You can also buy a bag and a tiny plastic sprouter and rotate your own - water, seeds, and a few trays live on my counter and I can have fresh sprouts every day (take about 5 days to grow and I have four containers so one day off.)

An alternative to sprouting beans is to soak them until they start to ferment. Adding a tablespoon of sour dough starter, or some "back slop" from the previous ferment will kick start the process. The fermentation process breaks down the indigestible fibers that cause gas, plus give an extra umami boost.

One note, lactic fermentation produces lactic acid which will drop the pH of the beans which can cause them cook a bit stiff. After rinsing the beans you can soak them in baking soda water, or put a small amount (teaspoon?) or so of baking soda or calcium carbonate into the cook water to raise the pH and make the beans softer.

Another alternative is to use koji rice for an even greater umami boost.

I'm reminded of Neal Stephenson's book "The Diamond Age", where one of the plotlines is about undermining the centralized (molecular) 3D-printing industry to a decentralized seed-based 3D printing technology.

When you think about it, seeds are fascinating in their ability to bootstrap an organism.

I took it beyond sprouting and grew full fledged plants out of fresh tomato seeds, fresh bellpepper seeds, dried beans, onions, garlic, dried chickpeas and dried green peas.

They all grew and produced their own vegetables.

Rice and avocado failed, but I didn't pay any special attention to their needs.

Tomatoes, onions and garlic grow under cheap LEDs, too. The latter two probably grow in the dark tbh, very resilient.

Plants are amazing.

Plants are amazing!

I had a giant summer squash vine growing out of my compost pile, and I let it go. Within about a month, it was not only producing summer squash but also producing pumpkin-like gourds (some yellow and green, and some white), a few of which grew to gigantic sizes. A gardening friend told me that this is because of hybridization and that the plant can exhibit characteristics of multiple parent plants. It's possible that the parent plant had been crossed with a pumpkin/gourd type plant to take advantage of some of its innate characteristics (disease resistance, etc).

If the weird offspring are really bitter, stop eating them!

You probably won’t die but you’ll be quite miserable. Apparently, once a gourd starts not breeding true, it can revert to a form with way too much bitterness - we humans have trouble with the chemical and get quite sick.

https://www.anses.fr/en/content/beware-inedible-gourds

Yeah, I didn't eat any of the weird offspring. We did eat the summer squash it produced, and they were delicious.

> cheap LEDs

Which ones did you use?

Whenever I open a fruit (or other seed pod) and find its seeds have already began sprouting inside the fruit, I plant them on my windowsill. It makes me feel like these particular seeds really really wanna grow and I owe them the chance.

So far, so good.

I do this with onions that have started to sprout, planting them in window boxes. Onion flowers are very pretty, and you can eat the stems that sprout. As it's a window box they never over-winter, but it's good for a season :-)

I've been told that this is just a plant adaptation where some sprout now, some in a little bit, some a little after that, etc - and humans have selected for the immediacy of germination in many crop plants.

My SO tries to grow avocados using stones collected from store-bought fruit.

If they don't achieve a critical mass of leaves, they eventually wither and die.

Their temperature, insolation and humidity requirements appear to be very narrow.

I had some success putting the plant right next to a humidifier - the only leaves not to dry out were the ones covered by the mist.

Avocado doesn't breed true, the seeds will almost certainly lead to a tree that produces inedible fruit. If you just want the tree, that's fine, but I wanted to warn you in case you're setting yourself up for major disappointment after 5 years of looking after a tree and expecting a reward ;-)

Just the tree - my sister is an agricultural engineer and removed any dreams of delicious home-grown avocados from my head early on. :D

I've had an indoor avocado for about 6 years now, at about 6' tall. I chopped the first leaves and waited until new ones took hold. It seems to put up with a lot of abuse. I've had it completely dry out once and lose all its leaves only to bounce back even stronger. I water it quite often but gave up on trying to humidify it after hard water left dust on the leaves.

Here is a farmer talking about how you can't just produce an Avacado plant from the seed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWAR_DotvZs

Well, you can produce a plant, but you cannot produce a "Haas" avocado plant from the seed of "Haas" avocado fruit. Each seed has its own unique variety, and few of them taste good.

This season I have tried the very first time to plant some chilis, grasses, and tomatoes on my balkony.

It's amazing how gardening works. It's basically area times water times sunshine. Only stressful moments are cold nights and spontaneous storms.

I wonder how many resources an average consumer needs to get enough harvest for a full year of sustainable consumption? A lot of land and water seems to be necessary.

Land, water, *and time*. Also, soil quality and sunlight matter. Finally, animal control. Rabbits and groundhogs can eat a lot and before you know it...you're not eating at all :)

I've read a few hundred m2 to a few hectares of land are needed per person to be self-sufficient. I guess it depends on what you are growing, your climate, and what you plan to do outside the growing season.

I have a friend with a couple of basic hoop greenhouses (around 8x2m) and for 6 weeks in summer they have more than enough tomatoes and cucumbers to provide for themselves to eat, to preserve and to give away to friends.

I think with a little planning, and only eating whatever is in season that week, you could easily grow enough in a 100m2 garden to provide all the vegetable needs for a family during summer. Planning is the important bit though, as some crops like broccoli need to be planted the year before. Oh and it's gonna be a hell of a lot tastier than what you get in the supermarket.

Closer to few hectares if you want to be self-sufficient.

Our greenhouse is 60m2 + vegetable garden around 200m2 + few dozen apple trees and some other fruit trees. The season is not very long here (NE Europe), so we basically start to harvest lettuce, radish and spring onions some time end of May and from that moment on we basically switch to "home grown" diet if you wish which lasts into late October or so.

The part about tomatoes and cucumbers is very true. Once they start to bear fruit, you need to have your preservation or distribution plan ready or they will be wasted.

That said, we have to visit supermarket weekly anyway...

Funny, I sprouted my first seeds in decades, and they are Acacia acuminata, one of a very large taxon of pea-related plants.

A. acum. is known (mainly in Australia) as Jam Wattle, because it smells like raspberry jam when sawn. There are supposed to be 2 million century-old jam wattle fenceposts in southwest Australia. Apparently they are proof against termites and rot. It seems to prefer 26 to 32 degrees south latitude, and sandy soil. Sandalwood likes to grow nearby to parasitize something it can't extract by itself, but can get from A. a.'s root system.

And, A. a. leaves (actually not leaves at all, but "phyllodes") have lots of interesting alkaloids. The bark has lots of tannins, and the seeds have lots of protein.

To sprout them you have to scrape ("scarify") the seeds with sandpaper and then put them in a bowl and pour boiling water over them first. Then, the seed has to be exposed to sunlight while wrapped in damp soil for a couple of weeks.

One thing to note is that sprouts can harbor fairly nasty bacteria[1] though pressure cooking should help with that, some of those toxins are tougher than others.

1: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-sprouts-are-especially-go...

From This Week in Virology episode 595:

"...having covered a number of food safety conferences and stories, if you talk to people who study and work in food safety professionally, every single one of them I've talked to, if you ask them "Is there a food that you just won't eat, for food safety reasons?" the answer is raw sprouts.

"Just don't eat raw sprouts. You can cook them, but don't eat them raw. They are impossible to sanitize and their production process is just a culture dish. Forget it."

[1] - About 47 minutes in to http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-595/

I've heard that you can alleviate this by adding a bit of vinegar to the soaking and rinsing water - it lowers the pH thus inhibiting the growth of most of the bad bacteria. For the article being discussed it seems like he's intending to cook all of the sprouts he's making so it should be quite safe without using any vinegar.

I find very little added to the water when growing the microgreens means no smell at the end.

Or wash them with soap? Sometimes my own home grown sprouts from a certain batch of seeds will all smell manky, but then I wash them with dish soap and then they don't anymore. What does "impossible to sanitize" mean? If I can eat with my hands after washing them with soap, why would sprouts be different?

There's a whole "microgreens" community now. It seems to not require very much labor and you can harvest every week, give or take a few days. Doesn't seem to consume a lot of space either.

Yep, I have been doing this for a while. By spending a few mins a day I have a regular harvest (every 1-3 days) of a variety of microgreens / sprouts. Once you have a plan of when to start things and some basic equipment, you can go on autopilot!

Any good resources for this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MlMLm1MmRU I like Jeb The Gardender - the truth is microgreens are pretty easy.

A cheaper version of this - https://www.amazon.com/Deluxe-Kitchen-Sprouter-VICTORIO-VKP1... works wonders - doesn't even need light, and as long as you are in generally balmy weather you just add tap water 2-3 times a day and you're good (the seeds contain all the energy.)

Jeb has some fun setups but you can buy a cheap hydro kit or make your own out of plastic tubs/buckets - for small stuff cheap cheap LED lighting will do - I have seen people use the stuff for tracklights for the smaller stuff - otherwise grow lights are pretty straightforward to acquire.

If you live in the states you can go to your local grow shop and pick up a lot of this cheap because of the popularity of growing your own cannabis, but its good for the rest of us indoor gardeners because of the availability :)

I started with a "Kitchen Crop " 4-tier sprouter with a mix of broccoli and alfalfa. I start one tray every other day and harvest the off day, so it is continuous. Change the water in the morning and at night. It's low maintenance, just make sure seeds aren't getting caught in the drainage holes.

I have since branched out to multiple types of microgreens, but those get a little more complicated and require lighting of some sort. Once you have a plan though, you get to be a human-in-the-loop robot to keep the machine going. :-)

Just noticed the sibling comment recommended the same sprouter, more popular than I realized.

What I do with lentils is just leave them with water during one night, not too much water so they "drink" it all. Once they sprout I cook them in a pan with a little of extra virgin olive oil. Finally I add salt and the result is a very crunchy and healthy snack that everybody likes. Sprouts with Mediterranean touch

Any lentils from the supermarket or do they have to be somehow untreated to sprout?

Make sure they still have their hull, but other than that normal grocery store lentils will sprout.

All the lentils from the supermarket that I've tried (and all legumes for that matter) have successfully sprouted: brown, pardina, black (beluga), and red. They're also good raw when sprouted, but not pardina, which I found ended up with occasional super-hard ones that hurt my teeth.

I have been sprouting lentils for two years. I just by GV brand from Walmart for less than a dollar per pound bag.

Started when I was clearing the pantry before moving to the west coast. The sprouting lids I think might date to the 1970’s and fit a mason jar.

I soak them about 24 hours, only because I will start them when I see I am low at breakfast and drain them the next day.

I let them sprout on the counter. Three or four days later they are done.

Great idea!!

I do not want to spoil your sprouting fun, but please remember this: https://www.bfr.bund.de/en/ehec_outbreak_2011-186689.html

Am I missing something or was this not just an isolated batch of Fenugreek seeds from 2011?

I went through a raw food phase, and there was something distinctly satisfying about bean sprouts. And crunchy salads. Cooked food seemed so dull by comparison. The jar method is good, I had one with some plastic mesh that I'd leave on the drainer and swill through a few times a day. The post has inspired me to resurrect it.

I eat sprouted mung raw and I haven't died yet, should I cook them?

As for soaking before cooking, I used to soak lentils (brown) and mung but it's not needed if they are cooked (35min with lid on). Only larger legumes needs to be soaked or cooked much longer than 35min.

Well it worked for Creed in the US Office, but it makes you smell like old people. Very scientific, I know.

You can absolutely eat them raw, no problem. Some people like me, don't like the taste of raw sprouts, that's all.

Sprouting creates a huge amount of vitamins.

This is just a huge amount of labour, and it proves that home cooking is fundamentally inefficient (unless you have a large extended family).

We should be able to eat healthy sprouted foods like this centrally, at communal kitchens. There is too much waste, inefficiency, and cost associated with current restaurants for them to fulfill that purpose.

An admiral thing about Indian society is the food, and extended family support. Its not surprising that this author is of Indian heritage.

Confused. Filling a jar with beans and water, and dumping/refilling every so often is "a huge amount of labour"? Compared to what? Sitting and watching TV?

This is a tiny, tiny effort compared to almost anything - running, riding a bike, vacuuming the carpet. Heck its about the same as ordering takeout delivered and going to the door to get it.

> There is too much waste, inefficiency, and cost associated with current restaurants for them to fulfill that purpose.

Why would 'communal kitchens' be more efficient?

> This is just a huge amount of labour, and it proves that home cooking is fundamentally inefficient

It doesn't seem all that more laborious than, say, keeping a sourdough starter? (Or at one of the other ends of the food prep process, a compost bucket).

Waste? I eat pretty much everything my wife cooks and she's getting better by the year.

Home cooking is amazing.

I didn't even say a thing about plastic utensils...

There are markets in Maharasthra where sprouts are sold on an everyday basis. Some Chinese stores have it too. Regarding making these at home: Granted there is a lot of wait time with these processes, but a lot of it is inactive - soak, rinse, wait, repeat.

But, it is a fair point that you should have these healthy foods available to you easily without having to worry about preparing it yourself.

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