Ingredient Intelligence

TruRoots Organic Sprouted Green Lentils

Coco Morante
Coco Morante
Coco is a recipe developer for The Kitchn. For more recipes, visit her blog, Lefty Spoon. A self-taught cook and classically-trained soprano, she writes and sings in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives with her husband and their beagle.
updated May 2, 2019
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(Image credit: Coco Morante)

Have you wanted to try sprouting at home? It’s really not that hard, but it does take some pre-planning. Enter the shelf-stable, sprouted and dehydrated lentils from TruRoots, which take just ten minutes to prepare. What a timesaver!

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TruRoots Organic Sprouted Green Lentils (Image credit: Coco Morante)

Truth be told, sprouting your own lentils (or any other legumes for that matter) is not a difficult business. I used to do it all the time during my crunchy vegan hippie phase in college — there was always a sprouting jar hanging out on our kitchen counter. My roommates and I would throw them into salads and stir-fries, and eat them out of hand as a snack.

The one drawback of sprouting is that it takes time. Depending on the variety, you need to plan at least two days in advance of when you want to enjoy your sprouts, and you have to rinse them every 12 hours to ensure that they don’t rot as they’re germinating.

Enter this new ingredient I discovered a few months ago: TruRoots makes a shelf-stable, dehydrated version of sprouted lentils. Out of the bag, they take only 10 minutes to prepare, whereas raw, unsprouted green lentils can take up to an hour. The lentils are boiled for five minutes, then left to hydrate for a few more minutes off the heat. Alternately, if you follow a raw food diet, the package recommends rehydrating the lentils in cold water. Either way, they will expand to just about double their dried volume.

I cannot speak to the nutritional difference between these and the home-sprouted variety, except to say that they contain comparable amounts of protein and fiber to unsprouted, packaged lentils, and a respectable amount of iron too (20% of your daily recommended value).

As for the texture and taste, I give these a big thumbs up! The lentils retain a nice chewy texture and do not break down when rehydrated, so they’re perfect for my go-to salads and stir-fries, as well as soups and other longer-cooked dishes. I’m happy to have these as a new addition to my pantry, especially during warm-weather months, when I’d rather not leave the stove on for long periods of time.

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