Sprout and Microgreen Recipes

Cooking sprouts recipes: the basics

Sprouts and microgreens are mostly finishing ingredients. They need very little cooking, and many are eaten raw. A few simple rules make every recipe here work better:

• Add them last. Stir sprouts into a hot pan or soup for the final 30 seconds to 2 minutes. That keeps the crunch.
• Match the sprout to the heat. Bean, lentil and pea sprouts handle cooking well. Alfalfa, clover and most microgreens wilt fast, so add them off the heat or on top.
• Dry them first. Wet sprouts water down salads and make pans spit. Spin or pat them dry.
• Balance strong flavours. Radish and mustard bring heat. Fenugreek is bitter. Pair them with something sweet or creamy.

Raw or cooked?

Recipes that use raw sprouts say so. For those, a safe swap is to cook the sprouts and add them warm, or use microgreens, which are cut above the roots. Read are sprouts safe to eat? for more.

Grow your own ingredients

Every recipe links to the seed guide for its main sprout, so you can grow it at home. Most take 2 to 5 days in a jar. Browse the Seed Library, or start with mung beans, the easiest bean sprout to grow and the one most recipes call for.

All sprouts recipes