Marinated Kelp - Manna from the Seas 涼拌海带

By Ellen L. Published: 2011-10-07

You're probably wondering what this is.  Why is the weird green curtain thingy showing up a food blog?  Well that's because we ate this weird green curtain thingy last night and it was delicious.  This is Korean dried kelp, a recent discovery of ours and a now firm favorite with my 老公 who swears that it is improving his memory by leaps and bounds (a good thing too, that is.)  After tossing a handful of the dried kelp into a big bowl of water the resulting hydrated kelp was almost two feet long by a foot and some wide. 

Really it was a thing of beauty with a lovely green translucent wavey tendrils looping down.  One should almost try to duplicate this effect for curtains and then rooms could make you feel like you are immersed in the cool calm ocean surrounded by its flickering green-blue atmospheres.  

Besides its good looks, however, we have found out that kelp is very very good for you, containing all sorts of goodies like iodine and calcium.  The iodine is great, since we use sea salt and probably should supplement our iodine in some way.  The calcium is an even better discovery since our little toddler doesn't drink milk as it causes her mild ezcema to flare and so we have been trying different things to make sure she gets enough calcium.  Apparently kelp has one the highest concentrations of calcium in a natural food source.  And my little girl loves the kelp too, so this is definitely going on our everyday snacks list.

The preparation for this dish is really easy.  You just hydrate, cut, mix with seasoning and eat.  Hope you enjoy this as much as we do!

Marinated Kelp Recipe

(Prep time: 1 mins  Cook time: 10 mins)

Ingredients

Handful of dried kelp (it expands alot, maybe something like 6 times its original size so depends on how much you need)
Sushi soy sauce to taste (or regular soy sauce is okay too)
Sesame oil to taste

Directions:

Add the kelp to a small pot filled with 3 cups cold water (or enough water to cover the dried kelp plus an extra inch).  Heat until the water boils and then take off the heat and transfer kelp to strainer.  Run the kelp under cold water for a couple of minutes to stop the cooking and to help add some crunch back to the texture.  The ideal texture is crunch at first and then softness inside.  Don't over cook the kelp, it will become soggy.  Slice the kelp into bite size pieces.  Add sushi soy sauce and sesame oil to taste and mix.

More Veggy recipes at The Hong Kong Cookery:

Chinese Cucumber Salad 拍黃瓜

Chinese Pickled Radish 醃櫻桃蘿蔔

Homemade Dry Salted Vegetable 自製干腌菜

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