Soaking or sprouting seeds-recipe terminology

[Dragontraveler]

Please help. I finally got raw seeds and now I am confused on what recipies want. I have seen raw food recipies that just say ground sunflower seeds. Others say sunflower seeds after soaking 8 hours and yet others say sprouted seeds.

I have read that we need to soak the seeds to activate the enzymes and to get rid of the inhibitor. Then many of the discussions say to dehydrate them to get them back to crispness.

Do you soak and sprout and then dehydate? If the recipe just says ground do you soak and dehydrate? for soak and then grind without dehydrating? Or do you sprout them, then dehydrate them before grinding?

If the recipies just refer to soaking them for 8 hrs do you grind them wet after the soak?

Thanks for your help

[ReneeH]

Hi! Great questions! Especially because with Raw Food it's all about texture!

O.k., when a recipe says to use GROUND Sunflower Seeds, just use a Coffee Grinder, Vitamix, or Food Processor and grind them to a fine powder for your recipe. You *can* soak, dehydrate, then grind, but who had time for that?

Now, when you need to SPROUT, you must SOAK first, then drain and sprout a day or two. Be sure to rinse several times a day so that the sprouts do not dry out.

For recipes like Alissa's Almost Salmon Pate, it's better NOT to soak because you will not get the consistency you want for the Pate.

Hope that helps! Oh, most of her measurements are AFTER soaking (if it called for that)...

...like for the Bagels in LOLF page 335, Alissa says to use 4 cups SPROUTED Rye Berries, so using the sprout chart on page 278-279, 1 cup (dry) yields 3 cups (of Sprouts), so if you doubled that in dry berries, you will yield 6 cups of sprouts. You only need 4 cups of Sprouts for this Bagel recipe, so take the remaining 2 cups of sprouts and make some Rejuvelac from Alissa's new book, RFFE!!!!

Get it? ;)

[ReneeH]

Now, for something like Flax Seeds, if it says to GROUND you do NOT need to soak because then they won't grind at all. For Flax Crackers you will need to soak the seeds.

Back to your Sunflower Seeds.... If the recipe says to SOAK your Sunflower Seeds for 8 hours, then I would do that overnight. The next morning I would drain the seeds and put the right into the food processor wet and grind them just like that, especially for Pate's. It's not necessary to you dehydrated the seeds in that case. You're probably gonna add more wet ingredients anyway....

[modernmonkey]

I have read that we need to soak the seeds to activate the enzymes and to get rid of the inhibitor. Then many of the discussions say to dehydrate them to get them back to crispness.



Yes, I too have been confused why dehydrating the seeds does not simply undo what the soaking has achieved.