The basics
Why microgreens
They are young vegetable greens, cut about ten days after the seed goes in: three days to germinate, then seven under lights. Small, but with a lot of flavor packed into them — and about the easiest vegetable there is to actually eat.
What they actually are
A microgreen is the same plant you already know — broccoli, radish, sunflower, pea — harvested very young, once the first proper leaves appear. Not a sprout, which is germinated in water and eaten root and all. Microgreens are grown in a tray of soil, cut above the soil line, and eaten like a fresh herb or a salad green.
Because they are cut young and eaten raw, the flavor is concentrated and a little surprising. Radish is genuinely peppery. Pea shoots are sweet. Sunflower has a nutty crunch that holds up in a sandwich.
Honestly
Why people keep buying them
No prep at all
Rinse and use. Nothing to chop, peel, trim or cook. That is the whole reason they end up in meals instead of going off in the drawer.
Real flavor
Each variety tastes distinctly of itself. They are used for taste as much as anything — peppery, sweet, nutty, green.
Another vegetable, easily
Most of us could do with more plants and more variety in a week. A handful on top of what you were already making is a low-effort way to get there.
Cut days ago, not weeks
Ours are grown in Fargo in a fresh weekly batch; delivery greens are usually harvested on Friday and kept cold for Monday evening. Salad greens trucked across the country are usually a good deal older by the time you open the bag.
Grown in soil, without sprays
Ours are grown indoors in soil, in a controlled closed system, with no pesticides and no sprays.
Year round, here
They grow indoors under lights, so February is much like July. In North Dakota that matters more than it might elsewhere.
What we are not going to tell you
Microgreens are a vegetable. They are not a treatment for anything.
There is genuine and growing research interest in microgreens — particularly in how nutrient concentrations compare with mature plants — and it is an interesting field. But it is early, most of it is done in a lab rather than on people, and none of it supports telling you that eating our greens will prevent a disease, lower your blood pressure or change your mood.
So we will not say that. We will say they are fresh, they taste good, they are grown a few miles away, and they make it easier to eat more plants. That is enough.
Using them
Where they go
- On top of eggs — scrambled, fried, in an omelette. Add them after the heat.
- In sandwiches and burgers — instead of lettuce, or as well as.
- Over grain bowls and tacos — radish and savory blend do well here.
- Through salads — a handful lifts a bag of ordinary leaves.
- Stirred into soup — at the end, off the heat.
- Blended into smoothies — broccoli is the usual choice.
- Cooked down like spinach — pea shoots take a stir fry well.
Keeping them
Keep them refrigerated in the clamshell they came in, and rinse them before use. The harvest date is printed on the label.