I am not a nutritionist or a doctor of any kind. But I am a nutrition nerd whose embarrassing hobby is combing through clinical trials. We’ve all heard that we should be eating minimally processed, plant-based foods. Further research has shown me that cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cabbage have phytochemicals that can help fight cancer.
But broccoli sprouts have ten to 100 times higher levels of sulforaphane, the cancer-fighting phytochemical that researchers call “the green chemoprevention,” than mature broccoli. I became especially interested in eating more broccoli sprouts when several of my friends (in their early 40s, like me) were diagnosed with cancer.
These powerful little broccoli babies aren’t sold in your average supermarket. I’ve seen them at farmers’ markets occasionally, but they are pricey. Even if you do find them, you won’t know how long they’ve been sitting around — and the amount of sulforaphane starts decreasing when the sprouts are picked, so it’s best to eat them right after harvest.
Luckily, I discovered that broccoli sprouts are incredibly low effort and relatively inexpensive to grow at home, especially if you have a sprouting kit like Soligt’s set of stackable mesh trays.
I’ve had this for about two months, and my husband and I have had sprouts growing continually. We soak the seeds overnight (of the two seed suppliers we’ve tried, this one had a much higher germination rate). We then spread the seeds over each of the two mesh trays in the sprouting kit and keep the lid on the trays (seeds germinate in the dark). We uncover them twice a day to rinse them in cold water. After day three, they will have sprouted, and we uncover and expose them to sunlight so they can make chlorophyll. The sprouts are ready to eat on day four. We just scrape some off with a spoon and put them in smoothies for our kids, in salads (they add nice radishlike flavor and good crunch), and on bread with peanut butter or hummus.
You can alternatively grow them in Mason jars with special drainage lids, but I went with the tray setup because it provides better drainage and the necessary darkness. Also, the seeds sprout more consistently because they are spread out on the tray, and they are easier to harvest because the mesh separates the sprouts from the roots.
So far, I’ve gifted the sprouting tray to my mom as well as to my friend Bettina, an M.D.-Ph.D. and fellow nutrition nerd. Now we all have a batch going.
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