Seaweed

Appears in
The Best Recipes in the World: More Than 1,000 International Dishes to Cook at Home

By Mark Bittman

Published 2005

  • About

These are marine algae, not plants and definitely not weeds. Though we could call them sea vegetables, we’re not going to. They were undoubtedly among the first foods consumed by humans, are still harvested off the coasts of almost every continent, and are (obviously) natural and incredibly nutritious—high in protein, vitamins (even B12, rarely found outside of meat), minerals, and trace elements (rapidly disappearing from land vegetables due to soil depletion).

Seaweed has been a staple of Japanese and Chinese cooking for thousands of years and has a history as a snack food in northern Europe, Canada, and even Maine. These days it’s usually dried and packed in re-sealable plastic. Some can be eaten out of the bag as a snack; others, especially nori, are toasted and used as a wrap or crumbled as a condiment. Most are best thrown into a pot of soup or stew or reconstituted and made into a salad or added to one.