The Buzz On Farm Fresh Microgreens
Since the 1970s and 1980s, modern chefs have been exploring the potential of fresh microgreens for restaurants, but they’ve only really taken off as a major dining trend in the last decade or so.
Fresh microgreens can be a visual delight, an unexpected but welcome flavor punch at just the right time, or an addition to the textural experience of any dish. Behind the scenes, microgreens have been identified as a reliable way for some restaurants to consistently access vegetables without concerns about seasonal availability, which is part of why Pebble Creek has begun to offer farm-fresh microgreens.
What are microgreens? How do you best utilize them? What makes culinary microgreens good for restaurants? Let us tell you!
What Are Microgreens?
Microgreens, put very simply, are teeny tiny greens. That’s a bit silly, and although accurate, it is not precise. They’re generally a salad green that gets picked in the early stages of the plant’s development. Those who grow microgreens tend to crop them when they get to about one to three inches tall, with a few very tender, small leaves.
Think of them as baby plants, but not baby greens, which is a totally different thing. If, in the development chart, you had to place a microgreen, it would be between the initial sprout and a baby green.
Microgreens tend to be nutritionally stacked and visually appealing. Their use spans from salads to garnishes, and beyond, but they are very much their own unique ingredient.
Are microgreens and sprouts the same thing?
Although there are certainly considerable visual similarities, no, sprouts and microgreens are not the same thing. One of the easiest ways to identify them is to note that microgreens are grown in soil, while sprouts are germinated in water. Sprouts are also often less flavourful than microgreens, but tend to be delightfully crunchy.
With fresh microgreens, you can eat both the stems and leaves. With the sprout, you can eat the stem and the seed, to some extent. Additionally, a downside of sprouts that culinary microgreens do not share is the potential risk of salmonella due to the humidity of the growing conditions, which is why it is recommended that pregnant women avoid consuming raw sprouts.
A Very Brief Culinary History of Microgreens in Restaurants
Microgreens emerged as a culinary trend in California restaurants in the 1980s and quickly gained popularity, particularly on the West Coast. We may tease the get-up-at-dawn for a run and finish it with a smoothie with a shot of wheatgrass trope, but wheatgrass is a microgreen and was a bit of a pioneer for today’s modern microgreens usage by chefs.
It would take some time for the culinary microgreens trend to expand Eastward, but by the early 2000s, people in larger cities were often able to see a small variety of microgreens in their local grocery stores. In the 2010s, researchers confirmed how nutrient-rich microgreens really were, and that encouraged nutritionally minded kitchen wizzes to begin to find unique ways to integrate them into consumables beyond soups and salads, going so far as to blend them into functional beverages.
How to Use Microgreens in Recipe Development
Though the price is similar to a full-size vegetable, microgreens have a concentrated flavor, which introduces unique uses for them.
When integrating microgreens into dishes and menus, remember, they should not be considered a substitute or a swap for their would-be grown-up selves. Daikon radish sprouts cannot substitute for actual daikon. I don’t think we need to elaborate on why.
But hey, think of the opportunities offered by having the flavor of daikon in a tiny sprout, ready to garnish or surprise in dishes that wouldn’t usually welcome the texture of this long, crunchy, often quick-pickled radish. This is just one example of how microgreens help give the idea of the vegetables they were destined to be, without actually relying on that vegetable to impart their flavor or essence. It changes the salad game completely.
If a recipe calls for a certain amount of kale or watercress, use kale or watercress—it’s going to go way better—but perhaps a spinach salad wouldn’t mind some zesting up with some watercress microgreens?
Think of fresh microgreens as opportunities.
As a pop of flavor or a bit of extra visual pizazz, microgreens really stand out as VIPs (very important plants). Thanks to their unique positions as, “not-quite” the vegetable that they would have grown to be, microgreens create opportunities for creativity in the kitchen. Culinary microgreens have a lot to offer in terms of flavour and texture and should be explored as individual ingredients instead of extensions of other ingredients.
Microgreen salad, anyone?
Benefits of Integrating Microgreens into Restaurant Kitchens
When looking at what your restaurant wants to serve its customers, you’re going beyond the surface level of what your ingredients are. You’re thinking about cost effectiveness, quality, seasonality, and the overall vision you have for what kinds of stories the food that your restaurant serves is telling. Ingredients are one of the many factors any restaurant owner, manager, chef, or whoever is making these decisions is taking into consideration when thinking about the restaurant in its entirety.
Fresh microgreens, the same as fennel bulbs, porcini mushrooms, or other wild foraged mushrooms tell your would-be-diners something about what kind of restaurant they are in, and who the people behind the food are.
Building a narrative
There is a certain vibe that a restaurant conveys when microgreens are on the menu. For a long time, particularly through the 90s, that vibe was “health conscious,” and maybe even “crunchy.” Those vibes are still deliberately cultivated for some restaurants, but microgreens have more to offer the narrative now.
Microgreens, when properly deployed on a menu, can invoke experimentalism, creativity, tastefulness, artfulness, and other story-forward concepts that provide restaurant menus with an allure that keeps customers coming back.
Customers like to know what to expect from an establishment, be it big vegan vibes, gastro pub, Asian fusion, or French food with a twist. Diners want to know what to expect from the establishment they are in, and they want to know quickly. Microgreens can help guide those expectations. Fresh microgreens have a history on menus and with chefs, but not so much as to give them a reputation as being for any one specific kind of cuisine. They are an adaptable ingredient that can help tell a broader story.
A Veggie For All Seasons
Declaring “all organic produce” or “farm to table” on a menu often means being beholden to the seasons, and we love that, but it can create some difficulty. One of the significant advantages of fresh microgreens is that they are not seasonal, as they are almost always grown indoors. This doesn’t make them less organic, or even less farm-to-table, quite the opposite.
Microgreens are the veggies that can be farm-to-table and organic all year long. Grown in shallow soil, indoors, and generally with a turnaround of a few weeks, farm-fresh microgreens are a reliable source of flavour and nutrients that don’t rely on the seasons. This creates a stable vegetable that can be relied on when other vegetables are scarce.
Microgreens But Macro Impact: Nutrient-Rich Microgreens and Health
Eat your greens! Now, who hasn’t heard that one?
We’re being told to consume more green (non-candy) foods all the time, by doctors, dieticians, and probably our parents too, at least at some point. Kale had its moment (remember kale chips), and there’s a wild variety of green leafy foods to choose from if you really look, but microgreens might just be your next “something green” obsession.
A Little Bit Of Microgreens Can Go A Long Way
Aside from the concentrated flavors contained in microgreens, fresh microgreens are also remarkably nutrient-rich. That flavor punch is more than meets the tongue.
Back in 2010, researchers from the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources conducted a study on microgreens, finding that they were, on average, four to 40 times more nutrient-rich than their mature counterparts, depending on the plant. This study still needs to be replicated, but the researchers involved are fairly confident in their findings.
We must remember that a significant part of the reason we eat vegetables is that they are filling, low in calories, high in water content, and generally speaking, high in fiber. Don’t just decide that you only eat microgreens now, but nutrient-rich microgreens could definitely be an advantageous addition to your diet.
Big Love For Culinary Microgreens
Whatever your reason, whether it’s their nutritional density, bold flavors, texture, appearance on the plate, or their all-season nature, we hope you develop as big a passion for fresh microgreens as we do. Pebble Creek is proud to have begun selling gourmet culinary microgreens, and we hope you’ll take the time to see if they have a place on your plate.
Whether you’re a restaurant or a Chef looking for high-quality ingredients, Pebble Creek Produce offers fresh, sustainably grown wild foraged mushrooms.
Elevate your mushroom experience and CONTACT Pebble Creek Produce today!
