[HN Gopher] My experiments with sprouting legumes
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My experiments with sprouting legumes
Author : koolhead17
Score : 53 points
Date : 2021-06-20 10:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.upgrademyfood.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.upgrademyfood.com)
| dvh wrote:
| 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.
| _joel wrote:
| Well it worked for Creed in the US Office, but it makes you
| smell like old people. Very scientific, I know.
| upgrademyfood wrote:
| You can absolutely eat them raw, no problem. Some people like
| me, don't like the taste of raw sprouts, that's all.
| debarshri wrote:
| 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.
| novaRom wrote:
| 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.
| upgrademyfood wrote:
| Haha!! She truly was ahead of the curve. Same - with my dad and
| moringa leaves.
| maxk42 wrote:
| 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!
| valarauko wrote:
| 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?
| upgrademyfood wrote:
| 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.
| Zababa wrote:
| 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.
| notdang wrote:
| that's why the pythagoreans where against beans.
| foobiekr wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_bean#Toxicity
|
| It can be worse than a stomach ache.
| morsch wrote:
| "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.
| molasses wrote:
| Oh man I got poisoned by some bought canned kidney beans used
| in a salad, and it wasn't pretty.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| 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.
| eutectic wrote:
| What's the mechanism? Sounds unlikely to do much.
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| _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.
| user568439 wrote:
| 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
| upgrademyfood wrote:
| Great idea!!
| zwieback wrote:
| Any lentils from the supermarket or do they have to be somehow
| untreated to sprout?
| uxamanda wrote:
| Make sure they still have their hull, but other than that
| normal grocery store lentils will sprout.
| craigbaker wrote:
| 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.
| somberi wrote:
| 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
| molasses wrote:
| 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.
| outworlder wrote:
| 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.
| uxamanda wrote:
| 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!
| enchiridion wrote:
| Any good resources for this?
| bserge wrote:
| 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.
| abhinuvpitale wrote:
| Plants are amazing!
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| > cheap LEDs
|
| Which ones did you use?
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| 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.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| 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
| shanecleveland wrote:
| 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.
| novaRom wrote:
| 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.
| Tade0 wrote:
| 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.
| tmountain wrote:
| 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).
| benjohnson wrote:
| 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
| tmountain wrote:
| Yeah, I didn't eat any of the weird offspring. We did eat
| the summer squash it produced, and they were delicious.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| 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.
| beebeepka wrote:
| 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...
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| 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.
| outworlder wrote:
| > 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?
| upgrademyfood wrote:
| 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.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > 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).
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| 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...
| pmoriarty wrote:
| 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/
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| 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.
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