WB033: Growing pea shoots

Pea shoots (Chinese & Japanese: 豆苗) are a micro-green that can be eaten stir-fried with garlic or added to clear soup.

Supermarkets here sell pea shoots (along with other micro-greens) in a soilless tray for JPY99 (~US$0.66). One tray is sufficient for one serving. What's great about these pea shoots is they can be easily grown a second time, making it a good value-for-money product.

After harvesting and eating the first round of pea shoots, I put the pea shoot roots in a tray of water and placed the tray indoors in a sunlit area.

I made sure to change the water daily, and observed the pea shoots absorbing more or less all the water after about 24 hours. This is unsurprising given the amount of roots there are. After two weeks of care, the pea shoots had more or less grown back.

The second round tasted good, though there is a visible difference in the leaves. As plants need nutrients from both soil and water, I think the third round of pea shoots are unlikely to taste as good.

Another micro-green commonly found in supermarkets here is kaiware daikon (Japanese: かいわれ大根) - a radish micro-green also costing less than JPY100 (~US$0.67).

I like this micro-green's pungent flavour, which you can reduce slightly by soaking it in cold water. Given its stronger flavour profile, I prefer using kaiware daikon as a topping, either with salad or a cooked dish like oden (Japanese: おでん).

--Ends