A pair of kitchen projects for the terminally lazy and incurably cheap $30 Cannister Sprouters from Found Containers Why the hell aren't there a hundred other pages like this out there??? Last updated 08/11

• "Thirty bucks? Are you kidding me?" (includes a bonus freshness tip and important info. on germination water)
• The pasta soaker sprouter (for smaller seeds)
• A larger mung bean/lentil/wheat/barley sprouter
• Tray sprouters
• Sprouting instructions, and a fundraising idea for crafters and handymen

I've always been a fan of so-called superfoods...yeast, spirulina, sunflower seeds, garlic...in fact, for years I was the only person I had ever known who had the entire Led Zeppelin catalogue and always kept deli sprouts in the 'fridge. I really don't understand why more people like me don't get into the superfoods thing...I mean, it's just good sense. A couple of ounces of sprouts balances out a serving of nachos. Two tablespoons of brewer's yeast in the morning compensates for gyros for lunch; add a teaspoon of spirulina and you can have extra garlic sauce with no guilt.

At any rate, there's a thin line between fandom and unhealthy dependency. I crossed that line a year and a half ago when I started to develop symptoms of kidney failure. I always seemed to have a foul taste in my mouth...I itched constantly...I could never tell when I was thirsty or not...at any rate, I was scared. (It turned out to be nothing more serious than a chronic zinc deficiency, but that hardly evokes the drama that I'm trying to set up here.) I quickly arranged a consultation with the head of my local Toastmasters chapter. (You get medical help your way, I get mine my way.) The first thing she recommended was "lots of sprouts".

Here's my tall pasta-soaker sprouter halfway through a grow cycle. This batch of mixed sprouts will yield over a pound of sprouts, enough to last me the five days it takes for a fresh grow. Note the drain pan. It's a tobacco tin lid with a recessed handle. The two dents that make up the handle turn into a perfect draining pedestal when this vessel is turned upside-down. This mung bean sprouter doesn't need a 'pedestal base" because the dozens of un-sanded, un-filed drill holes in the bottom leave a rough surface that lifts the cannister off of an ordinary plate for draining.

I'd been laying off the sprouts for a few years, primarily for budgetary reasons. Market sprouts are not cheap. Well, bean sprouts are cheap because they're a staple of Chinese takeout. Everything else is ridiculously expensive. Alfalfa sprouts: $5+ per pound, and they lasted 3 days tops in my fridge. Mixed sprouts: same price. So as an alternative, she suggested that I buy a sprouter. She had three on offer, ranging in price from a cheap plastic thing that looked straight out of the local Dollar General for $30 to a less-cheap plastic thing that looked like it might have marginally passed Wal-Mart's quality assurance board for $45. That pissed me off.

So I did a little digging on the Information Superwebisphere and found next to nothing at a more reasonable price...well, I did find a ten-dollar sprouter in Wisconsin...shipping was $18.

Two days later I hit paydirt at the local hospital auxiliary thrift shop: a lightly-used sprouter capable of growing six ounces or so of sprouts for a buck and a half. The price tag, still on the box, was $19.95. It was nothing more than an 8"x2-1/2" plastic tube with an assortment of four mesh caps, and a sheet of instructions. That was it.

The thrift shop also had a handful of discarded "pasta soakers"...those heavy clear-acrylic vessels that supposedly cook your pasta on your countertop. I happened to notice that the "strainer" lid on the pasta soakers had holes about the same width as the holes in the smallest mesh cap of the sprouter. And that gave me an idea: turn the pasta soaker upside-down, cut the bottom off of it and replace it with some mesh to keep out insects, and it should do the same job as the sprouter.

It didn't do the same job as the storebought sprouter tube, I'm afraid...it actually worked far better, and made about six times the volume of sprouts. And thus was born the inspiration for this current waste of your time.

$1/pound "sandwich mix" sprouts

I can't stress too highly how much I appreciate these sprouters. My favorite recipe uses a quarter-cup of lentil seeds (germinated a day earlier than everything else; they grow more slowly than other common sprout seeds) "chased" with a quarter-cup mixture of two parts red clover sprouts and one part alfalfa, and occasionally a few dakon or radish seeds to give the mixture a bit of "bite". Anything I can buy in stores here costs at least $5 per pound, and even the 100g packs of sprouting seeds end up costing me about $2 per pound. I now buy my sprouting seeds by the kilo, and the savings are enormous. A kilo of alfalfa seed isn't much cheaper than storebought packets at about $25/kg, but red clover is a bargain at half that price, and whole yellow lentils are typically less than $2/kg in bulk. It takes a total of about 15 minutes to do all the germinating, rinsing, hull-skimming and dish-washing needed to produce a one-pound crop of sprouts. It saves me $3-4 per pound (not to mention giving me much higher-quality and longer-lasting sprouts), which means I pay myself $10-15/hr. for the effort involved.

That doesn't sound like much, I know, but keep in mind that to earn an extra $12 per hour, the average person needs to get paid $25 per hour, since half of their earnings will be lost to the taxes on that income. Makes a lot more sense when you see it in its proper perspective, doesn't it?

Fresh bean sprouts twice a week

Beans are an important part of a balanced diet if you're a skinny white shit like me. I hate beans. But I'll munch on bean sprouts if they're handy. Storebought bean sprouts are notorious for requiring heavy washing due to the risk of salmonella poisoning, but they're not terribly expensive, typically under $2 per pound. So you don't save much by making your own when you factor in the effort involved, but you do get a much fresher product that last longer in the refrigerator. Dry mung beans are the seeds used to create market bean sprouts, and they're available in bulk from some larger food stores (e.g. Great Canadian and Loblaws Superstores in Canada) and always found at better health food stores are typically less than $3 per kilo, and will yield about ten kilos of sprouts per kilo of seeds.

Your homemade mung bean sprouts should look like slighly smaller market sprouts. I've noticed a lot of chatter on the web suggesting that you can't make homemade sprouts as good as market sprouts without the large barrels and gas injectors used by commercial sprouting operations. Bushwah, munchblunk and hooshmanzoddah! Here's the secret to getting fat, juicy sprouts. Harvest them just as the leaves emerging from the bean kernel reach about a quarter-inch past the kernel. Dump the sprouts into a big bowl, fill it with water, skim off the hulls and drain the sprouts. Then place the sprout mass into an unsealed plastic container, not a paper bag, and drain again. Overnight, in the dark of your refrigerator, the sprouts will absorb as much moisture as they can, and they should be as fat and juicy as market sprouts. Then you can put them into a paper bag. It's the extra 12-18 hours in the 'fridge that makes the difference...without this extra "soaking" time, they'll come out skinny and twisted.

A bonus freshness tip for everyone, not just sprout fans

We've all seen those ads for the Mildred Spinch Freshly Bags and "freshness-enhanced 'green' containers". Here's the secret behind these technologies: zeolite. It's an odd type of coal, apparently found in quantity in only in a few places on Earth (I lived down the road from one of those mines), that absorbs the ethylene gas given off by fresh produce. As I understand it, when this gas remains in the air, it signals the cells in plant matter to accelerate their decay process. So the more of this gas that you can eliminate from your crisper, the longer your produce will last, and this is particularly important with things like sprouts and mushrooms which have a very short shelf life.

As a fairly new popular discovery (it's actually been known for centuries, but only recently commercialized), this technology can be expensive. I've seen "green pucks" containing less than an ounce of zeolite selling for eight bucks apiece.

But I've also found a couple of products in the kitchen sections of dollar stores that offer surprisingly good value under the names "Cool Crisp" and "Kitchenfresh". These are pouches of zeolite and activated charcoal which absorb both ethylene and odors, and they really do what they claim to do...they last for months in the refrigerator, keep your produce fresh, and can actually be "recharged" by setting the pouches in direct sunlight for a few hours. These pouches are so effective that I've kept fresh Mexican strawberries in an open bowl in my older refrigerator for up to two weeks. They dried slightly, but showed no signs of rot. I don't usually get results this dramatic, but this does give you an idea of just how well they really do work.

The actual pouches of raw zeolite are probably your best bargain. There are countless variations on the green-bag/green-tub concept, but they tend to contain relatively small amounts of zeolite and may not be rechargeable.

Also, be careful before purchasing these products to check the ingredients or product descriptions. If they don't claim to absorb ethylene (or "vegetable gases"), or actually say on the package that they contain zeolite, they could be nothing more than baking soda and charcoal. Zeolite might be a form of coal, but it isn't cheap stuff. Still, a couple of ounces is all you really need to keep a refrigerator freshened, and an ounce or so is plenty for all but the biggest family crispers. I can't recommend these "freshness pouches" too highly.

Two important points about germination water

Most sprouting seeds and beans are germinated by soaking in a glass or dish of water for 12-24 hours. (I live near the US/Canada border, and typically germinate for a full day; warmer climes may require less time.) The pasta soaker's strainer lid and the larger sprouter's drill holes are perfectly ventilated for germinated seeds. If you try to germinate your sprouting seeds in the sprouter, they will either lodge in the holes or fall through in significant quantities.

Eventually you will wonder about the rich, greenish-brown "soak water" left behind after germination. Before you begin experimenting, here's a couple of things you need to know:

1. "Soak water" from germination is toxic to humans. Seeds have tough coatings to protect the cells inside the seed until the seed is exposed to enough water to give it a legitimate chance to germinate. These coatings are made from complex or cross-linked proteins, but these are not edible proteins any more than the black fat on a grilled burger is "edible tar". These proteins are not digestible by humans and cannot be made digestible using any simple process that I know of, so never drink the soak water or use it in cooking or preparing other foods. It may only be mildly toxic, but it's still not worth the risk of digestive upset for the trifling nutritional benefits that might be had from other components of the soak water.
2. I said "toxic to humans"...I said nothing about plants. As it turns out, the germination water from sprouting makes for some of the best free plant food you can get. It should keep for a week or two in the refrigerator, but after a while it will get gamey, so use it quickly. If you're a weekly sprouter like me, be aware that you can overfeed your plants on sprout water. I water my houseplants once a week, but only once a month with sprout water, although I've heard from greener thumbs than mine that they can probably handle twice this much "feeding".

Left to right: A smaller-sized pasta-soaker sprouter, an un-converted pasta soaker with lid, and a large sprouter vessel. Notice the four-inch-long crack along the right side of the tube? That crack has been there for months, and has only grown in length by a fraction of an inch because the hottest water it ever sees is the dishwater in which I wash it. You don't need a perfect pasta soaker; even a cracked one will likely last you for years. Front: I use cut-up fabric from a drycleaning bag to bug-proof my sprouters. And I always make an extra retaining ring or two when I'm setting up a new sprouter; those rings always seem to go missing, and I always seem to find uses for them that I never expected.

Pasta soakers are the Snuggie's of five years ago. (Interestingly, or perhaps not, the "snuggie" is what kids called the wedgie at my primary school.) They seem to show up at every thift shop and garage sale in the country. They're exceptionally well-made...keep in mind that they have to stand up to regular sudden blasts of boiling water. And they shouldn't cost you more than a buck or two. When the bottom is cut off, they make superb sprouting vessels capable of producing up to a kilo of sprouts every week. The secret is the strainer lid, which happens to use slits which are perfectly sized to prevent the smallest germinated sprout seeds from seeping through the bottom during rinses.

It couldn't be easier to transform your old pasta soaker into a sprouter.

1. First, cut the bottom off of the sprouter just above the inner floor of the vessel. A cheap hacksaw can do this, but it isn't a quick process; they use very tough plastics for these vessels. I've made eight of these pasta-soaker sprouters, and I strongly recommend using a heavy metal hacksaw over any common power tool...it takes a few minutes longer, but you get a cleaner cut, and there's virtually no risk of snapping the vessel...or a blade.
2. Sand off the cut surface of the vessel using a cheap dollar-store "sanding sponge" or any handy sandpaper until it has a fairly smooth rounded surface. An even, level opening isn't important...just make sure it can't cut you when you handle it for cleaning.
3. Find a plastic container lid which is about a half-inch wider than the opening which you have just cut. Slice out the center of the lid using a box cutter so that the ring you create from this lid will fit gently - not tightly - over the new opening. You can always use elastic bands, but custom-cut retainer rings work far better.
4. Cut a six-inch circle of cheesecloth or fabric drycleaning bag for use as a cover for the opening you have cut; the photos show how this works. All this does is allow the sprouter to breathe while keeping insects out during the grow
5. Finally, select an appropriate dish, pedestal or lid for use as a draining pan or "table". Sprouts need to be soaked twice or more every day, and they'll need some way of draining off the extra moisture. Do not cut grooves into the strainer lid so that you can use an ordinary sideplate as a drain pan! This weakens the strainer lid. These are designed to fit tightly over the wide end of the vessel, and you can't afford to have that strainer lid break on you.

And that's all there is to it. What you have now is a cannister sprouter of superior quality to anything you can buy at a health food store for less than forty bucks, and it'll last you for years. The smaller-sized vessels can produce ten to twelve ounces of sprouts per grow; the larger vessels can produce well over a pound.

Just make sure you always have an extra pasta soaker handy, because those strainer lids occasionally break or get lost. You can still use cheesecloth over both ends of the vessel, but at this point your sprouter becomes far more cumbersome to use.

Detail of a well-used mung bean sprouter; shows harmless staining that develops over time. Beans and seeds use sticky, indigestible proteins to protect the seed prior to germination. They wash away slowly during the grow, leaving a harmless brown residue. This photo also shows how drilling the holes from the inside forces the plastic to butt out from the bottom. This lifts the cannister slightly off of any flat surface, allowing it to drain of excess moisture. No special pedestal is needed as with the pasta-soaker sprouter. This photo shows an unconverted "fat" cannister and a converted "thin" cannister. This style of cannister is made by several different manufacturers, but the lids aren't always as interchangeable as you might hope for. Fortunately, the "broken" lid needed for sprouting doesn't need to fit tightly...it just needs to sit over the opening to hold down the "breather" cloth.

Tiny seeds require either a "bed sprouter" or a cannister sprouter with tiny drain holes. You can't make drain holes that small in a typical kitchen cannister using a drill...I've tried; it's a nightmare. But if all you need is something for larger seeds such as mung beans, or if you need a bunch of sprouters for your daily barleygrass or wheatgrass juice shot, those cheap, clear-plastic kitchen cannisters are perfect. You can transform one of these into a sprouter in about ten minutes, and best of all, you don't have to settle for sprouters in the sizes offered by your local health-food store. Here's how they're made.

1. Select the size of cannister you'd like to use. The two shown above-right are ideally sized for most purposes; taller cannisters can be less efficient than they might seem. The candy-cane cannister is almost perfectly-proportioned for family use; it will produce a pound and a half of sprouts every four days. The smaller, stained sprouter at left is ideally sized for a single person, or for sprouting half-pound daily crops of wheat or barley grass.
2. Break the flip-up lid away from the retaining ring. Ideally, you should be able to find cannisters for pennies with half-broken lids at local thrift shops.
3. Using a rotary tool (e.g. a Dremel), battery-powered drill or high-speed electric screwdriver, drill several dozen 1/16" holes into the bottom of the cannister. The example shown above drains very well; you can probably get by with half the number of drill holes used here.
4. Using a Scotchbrite-type abrasive pad, remove any leftover plastic chaff from the inside, and lightly buff the outside bottom. Do not sand or file down the raised bumps created by the drill holes; you need this extra elevation for drainage. All you need to do is get rid of loose bits of plastic.
5. Cut a ring of cheesecloth or other thin fabric for use as a "breather" for the top of the cannister. The retainer ring left over from your broken lid will hold down the breather fabric to protect your sprouts from insects and other pests...the ring does not have to be screwed onto the top of the cannister; it only needs to hold down the breather fabric.

And that is all there is to it. Drilling the holes takes the most time - the sprouter shown above took nearly 15 minutes - but it's also the most important step. Be sure you don't use too large a drill bit, or the holes could be large enough for germinated seeds to fall through. These holes are too large for germinated clover, mustard and alfalfa, but not for mung beans, peas, lentils, wheat and barley.

These cannister sprouters are fine for sprouting seeds that can be germinated by soaking. But not all sprout seeds grow best in these kinds of conditions. Some, such as flax and chia seeds (the same "superfood" seeds that come with the infamous Chia Pets), need exposure to both moisture and air. The Chia Pet is actually a perfect sprouter for this type of seed, but it's not something you can easily make at home. And I have yet to figure out how to create a homemade "bed sprouter" out of discarded square plastic tubs. Once I get a working prototype, though, I'll update this page with instructions for the project.

If you have such an idea, I'd appreciate hearing from you about it, because this is a sprouter I can use myself. So far I've been more than happy with the cannister sprouters, so developing a bed sprouter has been a low priority for me. But having tasted fresh barley/wheatgrass juice for the first time a few weeks back (it is remarkably sweet and tasty, not to mention incredibly nutritious), coming up with a bed sprouter has become something of a higher priority lately.

Click here to download a ZIP archive containing four RTF-formatted printable documents including two ready-to-use "raffle" sheets for the two different sizes of sprouters, a template "raffle" sheet, and an instruction sheet intended for inclusion with the sprouter.

I was so taken with the ease with which I made the pasta-soaker sprouter, and the efficiency of the finished product, that I approached a local health food store with an offer. If I was able to supply them with a steady stream of sprouters, would they be willing to raffle them off with the proceeds going to the local food bank? They agreed, so I prepped the project and a half-dozen sprouters. Unfortunately, I live in an area where charities aren't always appreciated...if you happen to need a charity's help, it seems to be a common local attitude that it's your own damn fault for being in that situation. In the following month, the shop sold a sprouter for $30, and didn't get a single dollar down on a sprouter that could have been bought outright for $25!

But I still think it's an excellent fundraising idea. These pasta soakers have been showing up at local thrift shops here at a rate of five to ten per month, and can be found for a few dollars or less at any made-for-TV product liquidator. It takes less than ten minutes to prep each one when you're prepping several at once, and I believe they really could be a steady earner for a local food bank. So I'm posting the raffle sheets that I used, and the instruction sheet included with each sprouter, in case anyone else wants to try this idea. Almost everything you need to know about the raffle is included in this ZIP archive, and the info. you need to actually make the sprouters is already on this page.

All I would add to what's there is the following "packaging" tips. When I created my sprouters for the local food bank fundraiser, I packaged and presented them with a circular breather cloth and retaining ring on the sprouter when it was placed on display. Inside the sprouter, I placed an extra ring, and extra breather cloth, and a printed copy of the instruction page below. The owner of the shop where the fundraiser was tried agreed with me that this made for a professional-looking presentation.

This idea probably won't work nearly as well with the larger cannister sprouters. The pasta-soaker sprouters, when cut and sanded carefully, present themselves as quality products which are actually worth the price of filling a whole raffle card. The cannister sprouters with their hand-drilled bottoms look decidedly amateurish, although I'm a rather ham-handed handyman, so a more experienced crafter/handyperson could conceivably develop a cannister sprouter that looks worth betting a buck on.

This is a scan of the instruction sheet included with the sprouters made for the fundraising
project. If the type is too small, the same instructions are included on one of the template
documents included in this ZIP archive. They can be browsed in Word or Works,
or printed as needed.