Quick and delicious recipes to incorporate microgreens during pregnancy

This is the fourth and final article in our series on microgreens during pregnancy: five dishes that make microgreens easy to include in everyday meals. They work just as well outside pregnancy. Part I covers the nutrients, Part II the varieties, and Part III the safety guidance.

Fried rice with kale microgreens

Ingredients

• Rice
• Vegetables: carrot and peas
• Prawns or shrimp
• Diced ham
• Eggs
• Soy sauce
• Olive oil
• A handful of kale microgreens, added at the end

Important!

• Cook the prawns until steaming hot. The NHS lists raw fish and raw shellfish among the foods to avoid in pregnancy, and lists cold, pre-cooked ready-to-eat prawns among the foods that must be cooked until steaming hot before eating. Stir-frying them through the rice does this; tossing chilled cooked prawns in at the end does not.
• Cook the eggs through. The NHS position is specific: hen eggs that do not carry the British Lion stamp, or are not produced under the Laid in Britain scheme, should not be eaten raw or partially cooked, and raw or undercooked goose, duck and quail eggs should be avoided altogether. Outside the UK there is usually no equivalent stamp on the box, so the practical rule for this dish is to cook the egg fully rather than leave it soft.
• Go easy on the soy sauce. It is high in sodium; a low-sodium version is the better choice. We have no pregnancy-specific source for a soy sauce limit, so treat this as ordinary seasoning restraint rather than a rule.
• Cold cured meats need heat too. If the “diced ham” in your kitchen is a cured product such as prosciutto rather than cooked ham, the NHS advises cooking cold cured meats until steaming hot before eating.

Kale microgreens stirred in at the end keep their texture and color. We have removed the nutrient figures this recipe used to quote for them: we could not find published composition data for kale microgreens specifically, and repeating numbers from the mature vegetable would not be honest. Stirring them into a hot pan at the end is also the safer way to eat them, which is reason enough.

Turkey, avocado and pasteurized cheese sandwich with sunflower microgreens

Ingredients

• Whole grain bread (a very Spanish option is to spread a bit of olive oil on the bread, it’s delicious, try it!)
• Sliced or mashed avocado
• Cooked or baked turkey breast
• A hard or semi-hard pasteurized cheese (such as gouda, cheddar or mozzarella)
• Sliced tomato
• A generous handful of washed sunflower microgreens

A quick option for snacks or when there isn’t time to cook. On the cheese: the NHS advises that mould-ripened soft cheeses with a white coating — brie, camembert, chèvre — and soft blue-veined cheeses such as Danish blue, gorgonzola and roquefort must be thoroughly cooked before eating in pregnancy, whether pasteurised or not, and that anything made from unpasteurised milk should be avoided or thoroughly cooked. A pasteurized hard or semi-hard cheese keeps this sandwich straightforward.

The microgreens here go in raw, so wash them thoroughly first. We have dropped the claim that this sandwich’s avocado provides “healthy fats for the baby’s nervous system development” — that is a causal claim about fetal development we have no source for — and the specific vitamin E and magnesium figures we previously attributed to sunflower microgreens, which we could not find published data for either.

Pea microgreen smoothie

Ingredients

• 1 cup plant based milk or natural yogurt
• 1 banana
• Half a cup of pineapple or mango
• A handful of washed pea microgreens
• 1 tablespoon of oats or chia seeds

Refreshing, quick and a good breakfast when appetite is unpredictable. This is the other raw-microgreen recipe on the page, so wash the pea shoots well; if you would rather not eat them raw at all, this is the dish to skip. If you use yogurt, choose a pasteurized one — the NHS lists unpasteurised yoghurt among the foods to avoid.

We previously said this smoothie provides folate, fiber and plant-based protein from the pea microgreens. We have removed that: we found no published folate figures for pea microgreens, and a garnish-sized handful is a few grams of food either way.

Green salad with broccoli microgreens

Ingredients

• A handful of washed broccoli microgreens
• Green leaves to taste (spinach, arugula or lettuce), washed thoroughly
• Half an avocado
• 1 boiled egg, cooked through
• Half to one cup of cooked lentils or chickpeas
• A drizzle of olive oil
• A squeeze of lemon or a few tomato pieces

This is the dish where the nutrition actually has something behind it. EFSA’s Panel concluded that a cause and effect relationship has been established between dietary vitamin C intake and increasing non-haem iron absorption — so putting a vitamin C source (the lemon, the tomato) in the same bowl as the plant-based iron in lentils or chickpeas is a combination with real substantiation, not a folk rule. Broccoli microgreens are also the one variety in this series with published mineral data: Weber measured higher phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, manganese, zinc, iron, sodium and copper concentrations in compost-grown broccoli microgreens than in the mature vegetable.

What we are not saying is that this salad prevents anemia. Improving iron absorption from a meal and preventing a diagnosed deficiency are different things, and the second one belongs to your midwife or doctor. Boil the egg through, and wash every raw leaf in the bowl.

Vegetable purée with radish microgreens

Ingredients

• 4 carrots
• 2 potatoes
• 2 leeks
• 2 zucchinis
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• A handful of chopped radish microgreens
• Salt and pepper to taste

A light dinner, and the easiest of the five to make safe: stir the chopped radish microgreens into the hot purée rather than scattering them on top, and they are cooked. They add a peppery lift that turns an ordinary vegetable purée into something worth eating twice.

One correction here as well. This recipe used to describe radish microgreens as a source of vitamin C and iron. In the largest published survey of microgreen vitamin content, green daikon radish came top of the 25 varieties tested for vitamin E, not vitamin C — red cabbage led on vitamin C.

The short version

Five dishes across kale, sunflower, pea, broccoli and radish microgreens: a fried rice, a sandwich, a smoothie, a salad and a purée. The handling notes are not optional extras — cook the prawns and the eggs through, heat cold cured meats, choose pasteurized dairy, and wash every raw green. Three of the five dishes cook the microgreens or let you cook them, which in pregnancy is the safer route.

That closes the series. If you have not read Part III on safety, it is the instalment that matters most.

References

• NHS. Foods to avoid in pregnancy. https://www.nhs.uk/pregnancy/keeping-well/foods-to-avoid/
• EFSA Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies (NDA). Scientific Opinion on the substantiation of a health claim related to vitamin C and increasing non-haem iron absorption pursuant to Article 14 of Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006. EFSA Journal 2014;12(1):3514. https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2014.3514
• Weber CF. Broccoli microgreens: a mineral-rich crop that can diversify food systems. Frontiers in Nutrition 2017;4:7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2017.00007
• Xiao Z, Lester GE, Luo Y, Wang Q. Assessment of vitamin and carotenoid concentrations of emerging food products: edible microgreens. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2012;60(31):7644–7651. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf300459b

This article is general food-safety and nutrition information, not medical advice. Dietary needs in pregnancy are individual — always follow the guidance of your doctor or midwife.