One of the most sustainable proteins on the planet — one that requires no land, fresh water, or fertilizer, and actually produces oxygen — has been growing in our waters long before humans, or any animals for that matter ever existed.
Seaweed is abundant, regenerative, and packed with flavor, vitamins, minerals and, yes, protein, and it’s appearing everywhere from pasta to baked goods to cocktails.
Perhaps the most widespread use of seaweed in the United States these days is in sushi, for which dried nori seaweed is used to wrap sushi rolls. And salad made with wakame, a noodle-like seaweed that’s both agreeably slippery and crunchy.
But it’s prevalent in pretty much all Japanese and Korean food in the form of dashi, the foundational broth of those cuisines. At its most basic, dashi is made by soaking kombu seaweed and slowly heating it, generally starting with cold water and bringing the heat up slowly over around 30 to 45 minutes until it starts to steam — around 160 to 170 degrees — but not simmer, let alone boil, or it will take on bitter flavors. That dashi then becomes the base for most broths and sauces in both cuisines.
And it’s becoming more widespread in professional American kitchens. Technomic reports that, as of the first quarter of 2026, 11.1% of operators menu seaweed, compared to 9.2% in Q1 of 2021. Mentions of seaweed and related terms have increased by 5.9% in add-ons and 3.7% in side dishes over the past year.
“I use dashi in literally everything,” said Aaron Chang, chef of Noksu, a modern Korean restaurant in New York City’s Koreatown neighborhood. “Instead of using water, we make a huge batch of kombu dashi. It’s a cleaner, more umami flavor that I strive for compared to chicken or fish stock.”
Chang starts by soaking kombu in cold water overnight, “just to get a natural release of flavor as slowly as possible.” Then it’s heated, and the kombu is removed.
“But we don’t let it go to waste,” he said. The kombu is then braised in soy sauce mixed with a little bit of sugar and water, then some dashi is added back in and the seaweed is thinly sliced into a sort of short noodle that’s served in a small pile as an amuse-bouche.
In Japanese cooking, dashi is usually finished with dried bonito flakes for extra umami, although dried mushrooms work well and provide a vegetarian option, according to Joe Anthony, the chef of Arvine, a modern American restaurant in New York City, who was trained on dashi on a cultural exchange to Japan.
Anthony likes to make other dashi variations, too, such as adding charred onions and scallions to the grill, and adding that, along with dried mushrooms, to the broth.
Then he adds a little soy sauce and some kind of acid, followed by boiled agnolini pasta stuffed with a four-cheese fondue. He cooks the pasta a bit more to thicken the broth and then tops it with another type of seaweed — toasted nori.
“Dashi is one of the few things that, when you drink it, you actually feel the health benefits of it,” he said. “I make it for my family all the time.”
He also makes a chicken dashi — adding roasted bones, chicken pieces, and dried mushrooms after removing the kombu, and simmering it.
He also cooks grain like farro in dashi and finishes it with coconut milk.
“It’s really spot on, and a great one-pot meal, too,” he said.
Seaweed could be construed as a weed, as it grows well without human involvement, but most of what we eat is cultivated. It’s not a plant, but rather different varieties of algae, which predate animals and even plants on Earth — by more than a billion years, in fact.
Though algae are different from plants, they, too, photosynthesize, turning greenhouse gasses into oxygen, and they’re quite high in protein.
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, seaweed contains 10-30% protein by dry weight, and it’s high-quality protein, with all essential amino acids. Those proteins are also easily digested, often more so than protein from meat and legumes.
It also is high in dietary fiber, vitamins A, C, and K, and essential minerals including iodine, iron, and calcium.
Pickled Bull Kelp at Tutka Bay Lodge | Courtesy Tutka Bay Lodge
And its culinary uses are not limited to East Asia. Cooking with seaweed has a long history in the West, too, particularly dulse — a type of red algae, unlike kombu, which is brown algae — which has traditionally been used in Irish soda bread, Scottish stews, and Canadian seafood chowders. Carrageen moss, or Irish moss, is traditionally used as a thickener, similar to how agar agar, another red algae, is used as a vegan type of gelatin in some Asian cooking.
Kelp, of which kombu is a type, is also a traditional ingredient in the Pacific Northwest, including Alaska, where a burgeoning aquaculture industry is developing. The Alaska Mariculture Cluster, a federally funded initiative, is helping to fund cultivation of the algae to the tune of $49 million between 2022 and 2026. The state harvested more than 344,000 pounds of kelp in 2025, according to the AMC, which projects that kelp will be a $100 million industry within ten years and $325 million within 20 years.
Mandy Dixon, an owner and manager of Tutka Bay Lodge in Homer, Alaska, is a big fan. The chefs on the luxury property pickle bull kelp, which grows crunchy bulbs that are good for snacking, use kelp oil for frying, and use sugar kelp, similar to kombu, to wrap fish, among other uses.
“We treat kelp as really essential ingredients in our cuisine, not novelties,” she said. “We use them like seasonings, in the same way we use salt and thyme, and if we want to add kind of a bacon flavor to broth, we might add a smoked kelp.”
Last year, Dixon’s culinary team discovered that sugar kelp leaves could be separated to form a sort of pocket in which fish can be inserted.
“So we would get these off the beach and make that little pocket, put your fish in there, kind of wrap it up and put it in the fire on the beach — you’re basically cooking en papillote style with the seaweed,” she said, referring to the French technique of wrapping fish in parchment.
Last summer she dried and powdered kelp and mixed it with salt to line Margarita glasses. She also candied pieces of kelp in kelp-flavored simple syrup, dehydrated them, and used them as garnish for the cocktail.
“I also love pairing it with chocolate,” she said.
Chef Nate Bentley's doughnut dusted in matcha and powdered kelp | Photo: Bret Thorn
Along similar lines, at a dinner in Anchorage, Alaska, promoting seaweed, Nate Bentley, chef and owner of Alturo Bistro, dusted a brioche doughnut in matcha mixed with powdered kelp, adding an agreeably bitter and umami taste.
Local producers also add it to chili crisp.
“It’s one of the most sustainable foods on the planet, and so it really reflects our philosophy of working with the earth versus working against it,” Dixon said.
Back in New York City, Ali Dey Daly, vice president of culinary at The Algonquin Hotel, uses kombu in a lamb dish at the property’s Blue Bar.
Kombu is used as an aromatic in the braising liquid for the lamb ribs at the Algonquin Hotel | Photo by Bret Thorn
“Kombu is part of the aromatic base in the braising liquid for the lamb ribs,” he said. “I use it almost like a quiet seasoning rather than something that announces itself. It doesn’t make the dish taste seaweed-like; instead, it brings depth, savoriness, and a very natural umami quality that rounds out the lamb.”
The kombu helps support the lamb’s “strong, rich identity … in a way that feels elegant and balanced.”
He coats the ribs in a paste of garlic, salt, and pepper and lets it sit uncovered for 12 hours. Then he braises it in a broth of water with kombu, garlic, onion, ginger, tomato scraps, jalapeño peppers, thyme, and rosemary.
At service, he fries the ribs to form a caramelized crust, coats them in a pomegranate glaze, finishes them in the broiler, garnishes them with puffed sorghum, and serves them with miso-glazed eggplant.
“What I like about kombu is that it adds complexity, minerality, and subtle salinity while keeping the profile clean. It enhances the meat rather than masking it,” the chef said. “I also like that it helps create a more refined savory backbone, especially in a dish where there is already sweetness and acidity from the pomegranate glaze and richness from the miso eggplant.”