I’ve Sprouted, Now What Do I Do?

You EAT them.

I’ve only been sprouting beans for a few months now. The first and easiest thing I did was to simply add them as an additonal vegetable in asian recipes (or rather psuedo asian recipes) that I already make. So, if I’m making a stirfry or curry, in go the sprouts. I also knew they were good raw, so I added them to my salads.

After that, I was out of inspiration. So I did what I always do when I want to find new recipes, I went to the Recipezaar website, typed “bean sprout” into the search field and waited to see what came up. I particuarly like Recipezaar because of the user comments on the recipes, and cumulative star rating on the recipes (Hey, if 35 people have given it 5 stars, it probably is a good recipe!)

Fried Rice, Pork Chow Mein and Egg Fu Yung recipes came up. I knew that Pork Chow Mein had bean sprouts in it (after all, you can see them in the dish) but I had no idea that bean sprouts were an ingredient in Fried Rice or Egg Fu Yung. I also saw a very tasty sounding recipe for Korean Sesame Bean Sprouts that went into my “to try” file.

So far I’ve only made the Fried Rice (multiple times)-and I didn’t use the RecipeZaar recipe. I just made my normal “without a recipe” Fried Rice and added the bean sprouts (This article has a good recipe similar to the way I do mine). The neat thing is I couldn’t even tell that the bean sprouts were in the fried rice-because of the diameter and texture of the sprouts they just sort of blended in. If you have bean sprout doubters in your family I would recommend trying the rice-they probably won’t even realize they are in there.

With this current batch of sprouts I am going to make the Sesame Bean Sprouts. It should go well with some beef marinaded in the Korean Bulgogi sauce that I bought last time I was at the Asian Grocery Store.

I’d love to hear your recipes and uses for sprouts.