Pea shoots

Pea microgreens taste like, you guessed it, peas! But not just any peas—think about the bright, fresh flavor of snow pea pods. They’re very versatile, too. You can use them fresh in salads and sandwiches or as a garnish, very much like many kinds of sprouts. They add not
just flavor and nutrition but some great green color and a really interesting visual texture. I mean, they look all viney and weird, so that’s fun. But there’s lots of other things you can do with pea microgreens, too! You can add pea microgreens to stir-fries. You can add them to omelets. You can steam or saute them and serve them (maybe with some garlic and sesame oil?) as cooked greens. You can even make up a big batch of pea pesto—pesto freezes well, so you can keep eating pea pesto for months. Just remember that pea microgreens shrink a lot when you cook them, maybe by as much as ninety percent. So if you want to cook with them, you’d better cook a lot!
Pea greens can be harvested at several different stages, and it can be difficult to tell the stages apart. They all look and taste similar and can be used the same way, plus, the names for the different stages tend to get mixed up. You might hear “pea microgreens,” “pea shoots,”
and “pea tendrils” used to refer to the different stages, or you might hear them all used to refer to the same product. But I harvest my pea microgreens just past the sprout stage, when they’re really young and very tender. You might notice a slight flavor difference between them
and older pea shoots, too.

So. what about nutrition?
Pea microgreens are a nutrition powerhouse! Like other microgreens, they don’t have a lot of calories, and there’s only a trace of protein and fiber, but they are packed with vitamins, even more so than most microgreens. A single serving will give almost you’re whole day’s supply of vitamin C, plus lots of Vitamin A, vitamin E, folate, riboflavin, and niacin, and smaller amounts of other vitamins and minerals.
But the real heavy-hitter here is vitamin K—a single serving of pea microgreens gives you more than your whole day’s supply! In case you’re wondering, yes, it’s possible to get too much vitamin K, but unless you’re getting a huge amount day after day for a long time, you
don’t really need to worry about it—as long as you’re not on an anticoagulant medication. Vitamin K helps make sure your blood can clot properly, so if you’re eating a lot of pea microgreens, there’s a possibility your anticoagulant meds won’t work.