On one of my first blog posts back in the day, I tried a recipe for misal pav with a spicy gravy that used sprouted moth beans. I didn’t have moth beans, so I used mung instead. I have seen moth beans in our Indian market since (and tried them once in India), but we have enough lentils to be getting on with! Toor dal, channa dal, masoor dal, urad dal, black dal, split yellow mung dal, split green mung dal, whole mung beans…Not to mention kidney beans, channa and black channa. Oh, and black eyed peas!
Anyways, at first I was intimidated by the idea of sprouting my own beans, then I realized how easy it was. Sure it takes time, but you don’t sit there and watch your beans sprout! If you’re like us and you never know what you want to eat until about 2 hours before dinner, you can make them ahead of time and put them in the freezer for immediate use.
I don’t like the raw taste of just the sprouts so I usually saute or boil a little to take the raw taste away. They make a great additional to Indian snack foods called chaat, especially pani puri. To get the mung beans lightly sprouted it took about 48 hours. You could keep sprouting them and rinsing them for 5-7 days until they become what we normally call bean sprouts!
1. Soak 1 cup of mung beans overnight.
2. Rinse mung beans.
3. Wrap in a wet dish towel and store in some place dark, like a pantry.
4. This is how mine looked after 24 hours. Give them a little rinse and wrap them back up and into the dark place.
5. And this is how they were after another 12 hours (36 hours after soaking).
