Homemade dulse-popcorn recipe

What marks the holidays better than cooking delicious treats at home with the family? Looking for a fun easy snack for your next home movie night, look no further. We recently tested combining dulse seaweed with homemade popcorn and it was amazing! 

Dulse has been called the bacon of the sea because of its savory and salty flavor, especially once cooked and/or fried. Homemade popcorn is the perfect opportunity to capitalize on this flavor without any specialized fry equipment. You will find that the dulse and oil alone are enough to add a strong savory flavor to the popcorn, and no it won’t taste fishy. However, if you want to add more traditional flavors (salt and butter) you won’t need to add much. 

You can order dulse straight from the farm to your door here

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons of oil

• 1/3 cup popcorn kernels

• 1-2 oz of dulse

Directions (for 1/3 cup uncooked popcorn)

1. Heat oil in a large pot on medium heat. We used Thrive algae oil. This oil is high in omega 3s and has a relatively high smoke point.

2. Rinse dulse under cold fresh water and pat dry with towels.

3. Place a few (2-3) popcorn kernels in the pot. Once they pop, the oil is to the correct temperature. Remove the popped corn and remove the pot from the heat.

4. Add in the kernels and dulse. Have a lid ready and cover after adding the dulse. The moisture in the dulse will cause splatter so make sure to cover right away.

5. Let the kernels and dulse sit for 1 minute off the heat then place the pot back onto the heat.

6. After the popcorn stops popping remove from heat and transfer to a serving bowl. Mix up the fried dulse and popcorn and give it a try. If you find you want more flavor…proceed to step 7.

7. Add some butter and extra seasoning (garlic, salt, pepper) to the heated pot and let melt. Then drizzle on the popcorn and mix together.

8. Enjoy!

Thrive algae oil

Pot with test kernels and dulse

How to make your own roasted seaweed snacks.

We love snacking on roasted nori sheets, you know the ones you can buy in stores that are little rectangle sheets with various flavorings. We wanted to see if we could make our own from raw seaweeds. It’s surprisingly easy! You can make sushi roll or roast and season for a snack.

We tried three different kinds of seaweed: nori, dulse, and sea lettuce. Then tried two different drying techniques, oven, and dehydrator.

Results: Nori was the best tasting with a better crispy crunchy mouthfeel. Nori also had the most shrinkage so a slower drying time on low heat works better for keeping it in one single sheet. Sea lettuce made a really good crunchy sheet, but didn’t dissolve very well when eating and felt a little more papery. Dulse also felt a little more papery compared to nori but had a similar taste. We did this experiment in a single shot from known nori recipes. For dulse and sea lettuce we suggest playing around with blanching, drying, cooking times, and temperatures for even better results.

Directions

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1. Blanch the seaweeds in boiling water for about a minute. This helps break down the cell walls making the seaweed more tender. Red and brown seaweeds will turn bright green during this process.

2. Puree the blanched seaweed. Make sure to cool before sealing to avoid pressure buildup.

3. Strain seaweed thought fine mesh or coffee filter.

4. Press seaweed on either silicone mats (for oven) or wax paper (for a dehydrator).

5. Cover with wax paper and flatten into a thin sheet with a rolling pin

6. Dry- For a dehydrator dry on low (~95F) for up to 8 hrs. For an oven dry at 260F for 3 hrs. When dry the seaweed will be in a flexible and crunchy sheet.

7. Mix your favorite oils (we used sesame and olive) and brush on one side of seaweed sheet.

8. Sprinkle on any salts or seasoning you wish.

9. Place seaweed sheet on a backing sheet oil side up and broil on low for just a few minutes. If you burn the seaweed it will taste terrible.

10. Now eat!

Dulse vs. nori butter

We recently had a chance to try out some seaweed butter recipes.

Typically seaweed butter recipes call for dried nori, which is expected due to the availability of dried nori in most grocery stores. We wanted to try using fresh seaweeds, nori and dulse. After nori and dulse butters were made, we used them on a variety of simple dishes to compare flavors.

Directions to make seaweed butter using fresh seaweeds.

1. Grab a large handful of fresh nori or dulse (~2-3 oz).

2. Add seaweed to a food processor with a little water and puree.

3. Strain pureed seaweed through a coffee filter to remove excess water.

4. Heat a skillet to medium-low and melt a half stick of non-salted butter (4 Tbs).

5. Mix in strained pureed seaweed.

6. Transfer mixture to a dish, cover, and refrigerate.

   The seaweed butter can stay in refrigerator for up to two weeks and can now be used at any time in place of regular butter.

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Now for the fun part. We used the nori and dulse butter on a a few simple dishes to assess the flavor enhancement and differences. We tried both butters on fried eggs, sauteed zucchini, sauteed mushrooms, bread, mixed veggies, and asparagus.

Dulse Butter: Dulse kept its red color when used to saute vegetables. It gave a much more umami meaty flavor to dishes compared to nori. This is to be expected as dulse contains more glutamic acid which is responsible for umami flavor. Dishes that used dulse had little to no ocean flavor. Dulse butter would be good for any dish where a more savory flavor is wanted.

Nori Butter: Nori butter became dark green when sauteed. Dishes cooked with nori had more ocean flavor than dulse, likely because nori has a higher concentration of lipids. Longer chain fatty acids, like fish oils, give a stronger ocean flavor and are good for human health. Nori butter would better complement seafood dishes like crab, oysters, and fish.

Overall the seaweed butters were well received, even by people that don’t particularity enjoy seafood. The crowd favorite was umami mushrooms, white mushrooms sauteed in dulse butter. These were very simple dishes so the differences in the butters could be detected, that being said, adding new elements such as garlic and lemon would be great things to try.

Dulse

Pureed nori in melted butter

Umami mushrooms sauteed in dulse butter

Nori butter in dish

Sauteed zuchini with dulse butter.

Seaweed cookies

Kate Hamm is the pastry chef for Bao Bao and Lio resturants in Portland, Maine. She recently revealed her recipe for seaweed cookies. These aren’t your traditional sweet cookies, these are soft and savory sablé cookies (sablé is French for sandy). Once the cookie is made it can be topped by a number of items, in this case, caviar.

Ingredients

1/3 cup cake flour

2/3 cup all purpose flour

3 tbls. powdered sugar

1 stick butter

2 tbls. dried and ground seaweed (preferably dulse, wakame, nori, kombu)

Directions

Pulse flours, sugar, and powdered seaweed in food processor until well mixed. Add butter and pulse until you have a dough. Roll into a log. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 1 -8 hours (the longer the better).

Once the log of dough is solid, slice into coins about 1/8" thick. Brush with water and top with a flake or two of sea salt. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes (edges should be gold).

Once cool, top with creme fraiche, caviar or trout roe, and minced preserved lemon, or other toppings of your choice.  :)

Watch the demo below

Roast Chicken With Crunchy Seaweed and Potatoes

Just the other night a few of us were talking about making fried chicken with dulse, and potentially how good it could be. Lo and behold, today we found a recipe for roasted chicken with crunchy dulse!

This recipe calls for kelp and dulse and is an excellent twist on the traditional roasted chicken.

This recipe comes from MELISSA CLARK written in the cooking section of the New York Times

INGREDIENTS

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

• 1 tablespoon red dulse flakes or powder

• 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest plus 1 teaspoon lemon juice

• 1 ¼ teaspoons kosher salt

• 1 (3 1/2- to 4-pound) whole chicken, patted dry

• 1 small bunch fresh herbs, such as rosemary, thyme or sage

• 1 pound baby potatoes, halved, or quartered if large

• 1 small red onion, halved and thinly sliced

• 2 cups ready-cut (or slaw-cut) kelp seaweed (about 6 ounces), water lightly squeezed out (see Note)

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

• Large pinch of red-pepper flakes

PREPARATION

1. In a small bowl, stir together softened butter, dulse, lemon zest and juice, and 3/4 teaspoon salt. Rub all over chicken, including the cavity, underneath the skin, then on top of the skin. Stuff herb bunch into cavity and transfer chicken to a rimmed baking sheet. Let marinate at least 1 hour or up to overnight in the refrigerator.

2. Heat oven to 425 degrees and place a rack in the middle. Remove chicken from refrigerator and let sit at room temperature while you prepare vegetables.

3. In a large bowl, toss together potatoes, onion, kelp, oil, red-pepper flakes and remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt. Spread mixture out surrounding the chicken on the baking sheet.

4. Roast, tossing vegetables every 20 minutes, until chicken is browned and a thermometer inserted into thickest portion of thigh reads 160 degrees, about 1 hour. Remove from oven, transfer chicken to a cutting board and tent loosely with foil for 10 minutes.

5. Transfer roasted vegetables to a serving platter and top with chicken and any remaining juices from baking sheet. Serve immediately.

Seaweed Beers are Gaining in Popularity

Beers made with seaweed are becoming increasing popular.

Great Lakes Brewing just announced their Irish stout with dulse for saint patrick's day. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world in Australia, Brisbane’s Newstead Brewing Co . just announced their new seaweed beer “Moreton Bae” which contains Ulva (sea lettuce).

It’s unclear if these seaweeds are simply flavoring, or if the sugars from seaweed are being used in the fermentation process.

Either way, it’s a clever use of a sustainable recourse that could tap into a very large market. The Brewers Association reported: retail dollar sales of craft beers increased 8%, up to $26.0 billion, and now account for more than 23% of the $111.4 billion U.S. beer market.

MOROCCAN LAMB STEW WITH DULSE

It’s early December now and the weather has taken it’s turn to cold and rainy on the central coast of California. The kind of weather that makes you want a warm drink in your hands and a bowl of hot stew for dinner.

While looking up stew recipes we came across this one for MOROCCAN LAMB STEW WITH DULSE provided by Mara Seaweed.

Can’t wait to give this one a try on a cold rainy day.

A seaweed thanksgiving

This post follows our segment “A seaweed Thanksgiving.”

Our last dishes were mashed potatoes, Yams with dulse

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Today’s addition to a seaweed thanksgiving is seaweed butter.

Butter is critical to many traditional recipes, and what would thanksgiving dinner be without a basket of warm bread rolls, waiting to be buttered?

We found a quick recipe from theKitchn.com for adding dulse to butter. The recipe uses dried dulse, because it’s easier to find in some stores, but if you want to add a little more texture, consider using fresh dulse. If you want to have the taste and feel of bacon bits in your butter, try pan tossing fresh dulse first then add it to your butter mix.

A seaweed Thanksgiving: fried yams with dulse

This post follows our segment “A seaweed Thanksgiving.”

Our last dish was mashed potatoes 

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Yams are another staple of the traditional Thanksgiving meal. There are many ways to prepare yams, but we found one way that looks especially good.

Yam fries with dulse - While the recipe is not mentioned, it could be gleaned from the basic idea. Leslie Cerier, a chef and author, shared a dish that contained fried yams with dulse seaweed, kelp powder, and toasted sesame seeds. The use of dulse in this dish is very attractive, as dulse is known to be the bacon of seaweeds. Dulse fries well and yields a salty crunch similar to a potato chip.

If you prepare this dish we highly recommend using fresh dulse to get that savory crunch. Fresh live dulse is grown at Monterey Bay Seaweeds.

Our dulse is being served in the #1 restaurant in the world- Eleven Madison Park.

We are proud to announce that Monterey Bay Seaweeds is being plated at Eleven Madison Park in NY. If you haven’t heard of them, Eleven Madison Park has been rated #1 on the top 50 restaurants in the world (2017) and has been given 4 stars from the NY Times.

We can’t wait to hear what Chef-owner Daniel Humm has planned for our dulse.

What makes the red abalone red?

The red abalone (Haliotis rufescens) obtained it’s name by the red coloring on it’s shell. If you look closely you can see bands of red and greenish-brown. Well you know the old saying, “you are what you eat.” It turns out that the abalone shell directly reflects what kind of algae it consumes. For that very reason the red abalone requires a diet rich in red seaweeds (Rhodophyta), otherwise the shell looks green and is harder to sell on the market as a red abalone.

Monterey Bay Seaweeds supplies red seaweed (ogo and dulse) for our friends at the Monterey Abalone Company. The seaweed is a special treat for the little molluscs, ensuring they are red, healthy, and delicious.

Here is a recent blurb from Justin Cogley, a local chef who uses our seaweed and abalone from the Monterey Abalone Company. You can visit his website at http://www.chefjustincogley.com/ for culinary news and recipes.