Seaweed Foraging
I went seaweed foraging for my birthday. My friend laughed when I told her I went out foraging again.
“Why am I not surprised?” She said.
I booked my class through Forage SF, the same company who I took my mushroom foraging class through. Similar to the mushroom foray, this took place up in the Northern Californian Coast. Unlike the mushroom foray, this class started earlier at 7am (due to tide schedules)
We booked a room out in Santa Rosa the night before to save us the extra hours of driving in the morning, which cut it down to 45 minutes the next day. At 7am sharp, we gathered around our instructor Heidi’s truck at the beach parking lot and she walked us down.
Heidi broke our class into 4 parts — Intro, konbu, sister saras, and nori. She taught us how to identify, forage, process, and prepare all the types of seaweed we brought home.
Showing us the stuff that washed up onto the beach as a demonstration of what to look for and how to cut:
She let us go off on our own to gather konbu after that. I’ve never been at the beach at such low tide before — it looks a bit otherworldly.
Ben harvesting konbu:
Kombu is fairly easy to identify, and it’s good for making dashi, throwing in soups, or hotpot! It’s also easy to harvest and also really abundant at this beach, so it didn’t take a lot of effort to fill up our gallon ziploc bags.
Sister Sara’s.
They are good to eat fresh (as in just take a piece of it and eat it) but it is really good when it is pickled. You just have to cut off the giant stems and keep the caterpillar-looking parts and the leaves. They have a really satisfying crunch to it, which pairs well with rice once pickled with ponzu sauce, or whatever you use to pickle.
Nori
Nori was harder to find at first and comes in smaller chunks, but they are so worth the effort. They taste good when toasted in the oven after it is sundried. A gallon bag of nori shrinks to literally less than half its size, so be sure to gather enough.
Each Californian is allowed to take up to 20lbs of seaweed per day, but I’d reckon we got about 10, 15 pounds between the 3 of us at the end of the day.
We were out there for about 3 hours, and I loved how the fog kept rolling in.
After the seaweed class, we went out on a detour to Ad Hoc for brunch because I had been wanting to try their buttermilk fried chicken… and it did not disappoint.
The salad may have been the ultimate winner here though. Their arugula at Ad Hoc never ceases to impress me, and the watermelon was pretty refreshing on a hot summer day.
After Lunch
The first thing we did when we got back is set up our drying station. Luckily I moved to a place recently with a balcony and a lot of sunlight. I heard the kid from next door shouting to his grandma, “It’s SEAWEED!”
It’s a good thing I live on the top floor so no one could see this mess.
Heidi tells us that it is best to rinse our seaweed in shallow tidepools as not to wash away the salt on the seaweed, but regrettably we didn’t do that for most of our batch that day. And yes — you definitely should rinse it either way, because there will be sand, shells or shrimp hanging onto your seaweed after you gather it.
If you wait too long to dry your seaweed, it will feel very slimy as you take it out of your ziploc bags. The seaweed’s natural defense to drying up is sliming up to keep in that moisture. It feels pretty gross, so I’d probably skip lunch next time and get everything set up to dry as quickly as possible.
Experimentation
Nori was the first to dry, so we put them on a pan and put it in the oven to toast. Afterwards, we threw it in the blender and turned it into furikake. Following some recipes online, we added sugar, bonito flakes, and sesame seeds. For the batches that were less salty, we also added a bit of salt to make up for it. I’d have to say this is probably my favorite end result of the 3.
We made 4 different batches from our sister sarahs. Ponzu, yuzu ponzu, a sake/mirin/soy sauce combo and a spicy vinegar batch. I think the sake/mirin/soy sauce version bested it all, though in the end they all seem to be fairly similar in taste.
We didn’t do much with konbu yet as of this post, but I’ve gifted some bags away to my mom and a few friends, all who have said they’ve really enjoyed making soup out of it… so hopefully I will be able to give that a try soon.
