Types of Seaweed - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats.

Hi! This is Misako Sassa from Japanese Culinary Cooking Studio. Today we are talking about seaweeds. Seaweed is really important for Japanese diet, and we eat many, many different kinds of seaweeds. Many people think “Oh, seaweed, gross!” because usually people think about they are slimy, stinky object on the beach, but think of it as a sea vegetable. In my childrens' class I tell them, “oh it is what mermaids eat!“ and they seem to go for it. So, today I just have a basic seaweed that I could kind of come up with.

Probably the most important seaweed is this congo seaweed. We use this mainly to make dashi which is the most important thing in Japanese cooking. It is a stock, basic stock. What we do is we soak this in the water, which becomes kind of soft and expands. And we make stock from it. And in this we have wakame seaweed. And when you soak this as well, it gets a little bit more plumper. You probably see this floating on a miso soup. We eat this raw. We throw this in salad. Actually this is a very versatile seaweed. We use this a lot.

And the next one is called hijiki seaweed. And this is kind of black stringy seaweed, and when you soak this it gets also plumped up. We typically sauté it with carrots, other vegetables, and season it with soy sauce and sugar. And that is a very popular dish. Then, I am sure you are all familiar with this nori seaweed. This is something that wraps the sushi and rice bowls.

And then, this is kind of new for most of you. It is agar agar. Agar agar is a type of seaweed. We use it just like gelatin. We make dessert. We coagulate things. This is the traditional, how it looks like, but recently they made powder version, so you can just use this as if you are using gelatin.

And then I have this one. It is called alno di. It is basically blue nori, but it is crumbled up into small pieces and we sprinkle this on vegetables or Japanese salmon cakes. So there are so many of them, and please do explore. It is really good for you, high in minerals, fiber, low in calories. That is how we stay slim, like this.