Sea Vegetables Category

This popular seaweed is very sweet and mild, and it's loaded with iron, calcium, and iodine.

This is a salty seaweed, so it makes a great salt substitute in soups and stews. Some people eat it raw, like beef jerky. It's rich in iron.

Hijiki has a mild flavor, so it's a good choice if you want to slip a sea vegetable unobtrusively into your soups and stews in order to fortify them with calcium, iron, and other nutrients. When rehydrated, it roughly quadruples in size, so a little goes a long way.

Like other sea vegetables, konbu is rich in minerals. It's very popular in Japan, where it's used to flavor dashi, a soup stock. Konbu is usually sold dried, in strips or sheets. Choose konbu that's very dark, almost black, and don't wipe off the white residue that often appears on the surface; it's very flavorful.

This protein-rich seaweed is popular in Britain and Japan. To rehydrate, soak it in water for about an hour, then add it to soups and salads. Laver is sometimes called nori, but that name is more commonly used for the dark sheets that the Japanese use to wrap sushi, which are made from the same plant.

Nama wakame is Japanese for "raw seaweed." Look for bags of this heavily salted seaweed in Japanese or Korean markets.

Sea grapes small stalks of green seaweed with grape like balls popular in Asia. They are usually eaten raw and taste like the sea. Sea grapes add a umami flavor to dishes.

Sea moss is a type of frilly seaweed that grows in tidepools. Sea moss grows in a variety of colors and It can be eaten on its own or used as a thickener. It is often sold as a gel. Many people believe sea moss has medicinal qualities.

Most of us unknowingly eat processed sea vegetables every day. Manufacturers use them as thickeners and stabilizers in such products as ice cream, instant pudding, whipped toppings, salad dressings, and even toothpaste. But unprocessed sea vegetables haven't caught on much outside of Asia. It's a shame, since they're dense with vitamins, minerals, and protein, yet low in calories. You can usually find plastic bags of dehydrated sea vegetables in health food stores, or in the Asian foods section of larger supermarkets. After rehydrating, chop them up and add them to salads, soups, stews, or stir-fries

These thin dark sheets are used to make sushi. They're usually a dark purplish-black, but they turn green and acquire a pleasant, nutty flavor when toasted. You can make your own toasted nori sheets by passing nori sheets over a flame a few times. Yaki means cooked in Japanese, so pretoasted nori sheets are labeled yaki-nori or yaki sushi nori. Look for toasted and untoasted sushi nori in the Asian foods section of large supermarkets. The name nori is also used for laver, the plant that sushi nori is made from. Unlike sushi nori, laver should be rehydrated before use. If you can't find sushi nori, one option is to make sushi without a wrapper. It helps to use plastic wrap to shape the roll.

This has a sweet flavor, and it's rich in calcium. It's often rehydrated and then added to miso soup or sautéed as a side dish. Dry wakame can also be toasted and crumbled over salads and other dishes. It's very high in calcium.