Can You Sprout Masoor Dal? Moth (Matki), Lobia and Which to Cook

Raw sprouts can carry bacteria that cause serious food poisoning, so anyone pregnant, over 65, under 5, or with weak immunity should eat them cooked, and rajma and soybean sprouts must never be eaten raw by anyone. With that settled: yes, you can sprout masoor dal, as long as it’s whole (sabut) masoor, and the same goes for moth (matki), lobia, kala chana and kulthi. Split daal won’t sprout at all. Here’s which pulses work, how long each takes, and how to store sprouts without growing something you didn’t plan to.

Raw sprouts: who must cook them first

Sprouting needs warmth and moisture. So do bacteria. A jar of damp seeds sitting at 30 °C for a day is close to a perfect incubator, and if even a few germs such as Salmonella or E. coli were on the seed coat, they multiply right alongside the shoots. Rinsing can’t reach bacteria that sit inside cracks in the seed, and even careful home sprouting can’t promise zero risk.

For a healthy adult, the risk from a fresh, clean-smelling homemade batch is low. For some people, though, a bout of food poisoning can be dangerous, so their sprouts should be cooked until steaming hot all the way through:

• Pregnant women, because some infections can harm the baby.
• Adults over 65, whose defences are weaker.
• Children under 5, who also shouldn’t get whole sprouted chana or lobia they could choke on. Mash or chop them.
• Anyone with low immunity: chemotherapy, a transplant, long-term steroids, HIV, or diabetes that’s poorly controlled.

Cooking is quick. Steam sprouts for 5 to 7 minutes, boil them for 3 to 5, or stir-fry them covered in a little oil for about 5 minutes until hot right through. Sprouted kala chana is done in 1 whistle in a pressure cooker.

Rajma and soybean: never raw

Raw kidney beans contain a natural toxin (a lectin called phytohaemagglutinin) that causes hours of vomiting and diarrhoea, and sprouting doesn’t remove it. Rajma sprouts must be boiled hard for at least 10 minutes and then cooked until soft, just like unsprouted rajma; our kidney bean safety guide has the details. Soybean sprouts carry compounds that interfere with protein digestion and taste beany raw. Cook them for at least 10 minutes too.

Which pulses can you sprout? Every one, with times

Soak times assume room temperature of about 25 to 30 °C. In a cool winter kitchen add a few hours; in a hot summer one, sprouts come faster and need rinsing more often.

Stop when the tails are about 0.5 to 1 cm long. Longer tails taste grassy and turn soft faster in the fridge. Moong and matki are the easiest for beginners, and the classic moong and chana method, stage by stage, is in our guide to moong and chana sprouts at home.

Can you sprout masoor dal?

Yes, but only the whole brown lentil, sabut masoor. It’s one of the fastest sprouters, often showing tails in 12 hours, and the sprouts are small, crisp and slightly peppery. Red masoor (dhuli) is split and skinned, so it will only swell and go mushy.

Why split daal won’t sprout (and other failures)

A pulse is a seed. It has two halves (cotyledons) packed with food, and between them sits a tiny embryo, the part that actually grows. When daal is split and skinned in the mill, that embryo is broken or lost. So dhuli moong, chana daal, arhar and red masoor can soak for days and will never sprout; they’ll just ferment. “Does yellow moong dal sprout?” No, for the same reason.

Whole pulses fail too, sometimes. Very old stock loses the will to grow. Seeds that were heat-treated or roasted are dead. A batch that stays in standing water drowns. If fewer than half your seeds show a tail after two days, start again with fresh stock rather than waiting.

Here’s a fact worth keeping: the “bean sprouts” in Chinese restaurant food are almost always sprouted moong, grown long in the dark.

How to sprout safely, step by step

1. Measure: half a cup (about 100 g) of whole pulses makes roughly 1.5 to 2 cups of sprouts, enough for 2 or 3 people.
2. Pick and rinse: remove stones, broken or shrivelled seeds, then rinse 3 times in clean water. Wash your hands and use a clean steel or glass bowl.
3. Soak: cover with 3 times their volume of drinking-quality water for the time in the chart. Throw the soak water away.
4. Drain and rest: tip into a clean colander or a jar covered with muslin, tilted so water runs out. Cover with a clean damp cloth and keep out of direct sun.
5. Rinse and drain every 8 to 12 hours, or every 6 to 8 hours when the room is above 30 °C. Water must never pool at the bottom.
6. Stop at 0.5 to 1 cm tails. Give a final rinse, spread on a clean cloth for 20 to 30 minutes to air-dry, then refrigerate straight away.

How to store sprouts, and when to throw them out

Sprouts are fresh produce. Treat them like cut salad, not like dry daal.

• Fridge, raw: in a clean box lined with a paper towel, at 5 °C or colder, for about 2 to 3 days. Keep them dry; wet sprouts turn slimy fast.
• Fridge, cooked: 1 to 2 days, covered.
• Freezer: the only way to store sprouts for a long time. Blanch them in boiling water for 2 minutes, cool in cold water, pat dry and freeze flat in a bag for up to about a month. They’ll lose their crunch, so use them in cooked dishes.
• Counter: no. In a warm kitchen, finished sprouts go off within hours.

Throw sprouts away, without tasting, if they smell sour, musty or rotten, feel slimy, have brown mushy tails, or show fuzzy growth in grey, green, black or pink on the seed. Tasting is not a test.

One thing that looks alarming but is normal: fine white root hairs, like soft cotton spread evenly along each tail, usually on the second day. They cling to the root and wilt when rinsed. Mould is different: it sits on the seed itself, spreads in patches, often has colour and smells stale. In a monsoon kitchen, when anything damp spoils quickly, our monsoon fridge rules apply to sprouts too.

Sprouting questions from the kitchen

More on buying, cooking and storing pulses is in Grains, Daals & Pulses.