How do you prepare Seaweed?

[supernova]

I honestly love the seaweed salad that you get in sushi restaurants. I could eat mountains of it.

I went to an asian market not long ago and got some salt-packed seaweed. I finally soaked it enough to get most of the salt out, but it is very chewy and tough. This is bigger and probably tougher than the restaurant salad.

Am I supposed to cook it first?

[pinto]

1. Steam it a bit, chop if needed, then use it in whatever. The big stuff doesn't go well in a salad,

best used in a cooked dish. I use it with fish a lot. :hi:

[Warpy]

2. Did you get the right kind?

Hijiki is the stuff I've seen most often in salads. Dried, it looks like thin black strands of whatever. Its color comes back to a deep green-black after it's soaked and de salted. It tastes like low tide, IMO, not my favorite but YMMV.

Wakame is the stuff I like to cook in soups as one of the vegetables. It's bright green after soaking and has a fairly mild flavor.

Kombu (kelp) is what I use strips of to salt and lend a fishy flavor to sauces and broths that I'm using with seafood. It's also Japanese Alka Seltzer, said to settle the stomach, although it generally goes into such light fare that I can't tell.

Laver is a purple seaweed harvested here in the US. It's also chopped and cooked and can be used as a salad ingredient or as a vegetable.

Nori comes in sheets and is generally used dry and toasted over a gas stove flame. It can be crumbled and used as a salty-fishy seasoning or to wrap sushi.

And yes, you do need to cook all of it except nori before you chill it and use it in a salad.

[kurtzapril4]

3. By returning it to its homeland...

the ocean. LOL!

[Phentex]

4. LOL!...

I don't eat it anymore. I have too many other things I'd rather eat!