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.

Seaweeds are one of the best things to eat to help preserve biodiversity and the planet

Last month, the United Nations released a report on biodiversity and ecosystems that found 1 million plant and animal species are currently facing extinction.

The World Wildlife Fund argues dietary monotony leads to a decline in biodiversity since many animals can’t thrive on land that has been transformed to farmlands. Did you know that 75% of the global food supply comes from just 12 plant and five animal species?

In response to this issue, the WWF published “Future 50 Foods,” a list of “foods we should eat more of because they are nutritious, have a lower impact on our planet than animal-based foods, can be affordable, accessible, and taste good.”

On this list there are two seaweed recommendations, wakame, and nori. While the authors clearly selected these on market availability, the same arguments can be made for a variety of seaweeds available by seaweed farms and local foragers.

Variety is the spice of life, but now it seems like it also might be what saves species diversity.

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

Nori and kelp butter recipes

Did you know you can mix seaweed with melted butter to enhance the taste of a variety of dishes? We have provided two examples using two different varieties of seaweed and on two very different dishes. The butter itself is incredibly easy to make by simply grinding (if dry) or pureeing (if fresh/ wet) the seaweed of choice and mixing with melted butter. These recipes were published in Bon Appétit.

Note* the kelp and nori recipes assume using dry seaweed as that’s what is mostly available at the store, however, using fresh seaweed as puree will likely have an even better taste and texture.

1. Scallops with Nori Brown Butter and Dill

   1. Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat and cook, stirring often, until butter foams, then browns (do not let it burn), 5–8 minutes. Transfer to a medium bowl.

   2. Pulse nori and soaking water in a food processor to a coarse paste. Stir into brown butter along with chopped dill; season with salt and keep nori brown butter warm.

   3. cook and serve scallops with nori brown butter, dill sprigs, and lemons for squeezing over.

2. Blackened Cabbage with Kelp Brown Butter

   1. Grind kombu in a spice mill or with a mortar and pestle to a fine powder. (You should have about ¾ tsp.) Heat oil in a medium heavy skillet over medium-high and add half of cabbage, cut side down. Cook cabbage, undisturbed, until underside is almost blackened (the edge of the sides will start to brown as well), 10–15 minutes.

   2. Reduce heat to medium-low, add butter to skillet, and shake pan to help butter get in, around, and under cabbage. As soon as butter is melted and foaming, tilt skillet toward you and spoon browning butter over cabbage, being sure to bathe the area around the core.

Happy seaweed day!

Today, February 6th, is national seaweed day (海苔の日 ) in Japan!

In 1966 the National Lionfish and Shellfishes Cooperative Federation Association declared February 6 the day of seaweed. This date was chosen as it marks the beginning of the nori season (early spring).

So go out and grab some of your favorite seaweed snacks to celebrate!

Chinese new year seaweed snack

As the new year approaches, you might find yourself hosting some friends and family for a late night celebration. The best way to stay up late is by keeping your energy up with an assortment of snacks. We recently found this fun Chinese new year snack that would be a welcome addition to any snack table.

Crispy Seaweed Crackers (酥炸紫菜饼）

To make this Chinese new year snack you will need some thin dried seaweed (like nori), some rice flower, and seasoning of choice.

1. Mix rice flower, seasoning, and water until it forms a paste

2. Cover seaweed with paste

3. Fry in oil until golden brown (3-4 min)

4. Once cooled these snacks can be stored in a dry sealed container

Read the full article here

Seaweed common names: Laver

There are many names for commonly consumed seaweeds. However, the species they refer to vary by region and culture. We will cover some of the most commonly used names for seaweeds, and review the differences between connotation and denotation. This series will review some of the most common common-names in use.

Previous posts include: Nori, Wakame

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Laver

Laver, Latin for water plant, was adopted by the English some time in the 16th century. In Wales a popular dish was known as laverbread or bara lawr. To make laverbread, thin sheet like algae were collected from the rocky shores, boiled, pureed, then mixed with oats and fried. It was this popular dish that gave laver its current meaning: thin sheet like algae.

Today laver is liberally used to define edible seaweeds, but more specifically thin algae. Color adjectives became common to separate types of laver, green laver (Ulva sp.), purple laver (Pyropia sp. or Porphyra sp.).

Laver in the marketplace is considered a synonym of zicai (Chinese: 紫菜; pinyin: Zǐcài) in China, nori (海苔) in Japan, and gim (김) in Korea.

A seaweed thanksgiving: seaweed steak sauce

This post follows our segment “A seaweed Thanksgiving.”

Our last dishes were mashed potatoes, Yams with dulse, seaweed butter

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Today we are introducing a seaweed steak sauce featured in the Wine Enthusiast, courtesy of Junghyun Park “JP”, chef and co-owner of Atomix in New York City. This recipe calls for nori, which is available in nearly all grocery stores. The sauce is Korean influenced using a little soy and toasted sesame oil. Then JP couples the seaweed sauce with a spicy horseradish sauce to give the steak a little spice.

While this sauce was intended for steak, it could be easily adapted for other meats and vegetables.