There’s no point denying it, you may have to get your head around eating seaweeds. In western cuisines they often get overlooked as ingredients, but we can almost guarantee you will have eaten them in some form or other - they are often used as thickening agents or flavourings in the more ‘instant’ food you get made in factories and may only have to add water to. Yum. Not to mention their use in sushi, where they are a vital part of the dish, both for structure and flavour. Here at Forage Box, we absolutely love using native seaweeds in all our cooking. Nearly all seaweed you find on UK shores is edible, and they are all full of nutrients that are sometimes tricky to come by in other food. Aside from the many health benefits of eating seaweed, they are pretty much all delicious and have a range of flavours that can be used in so many savoury meals.

This time out we have kombu. It’s a sort of kelp, which hangs around at the very lowest tide points - just have a look at the photo to see it lurking just out of reach. Aside from being incredibly good for you, it has a lovely umami-salty flavour that suits being included in a stock or soup. Next time you reach for a bay leaf, try adding a similar sized piece of dried oarweed to add a different dimension to your meal. If you take the time to powder it or break it into smaller pieces, it adds a rich quality to rice and other grains, and fits right in crumbled into a side dish of sauteed vegetables.

There is so much to be said for including seaweeds in your daily diet, that we could fill an entire website with enthusiasm. We will resist that temptation and instead encourage you to start your journey into this criminally overlooked food source.

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Reduced due to slight marking on packaging.

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