Ways to Use Kelp: Storage, Benefits, and Characteristics

Kelp, correctly called marine algae, are powerhouses of nutrients and enhance the flavour and texture of food! We've made a list of how you can cook, prepare, and store our Kelp products. Use this list to help experiment and cook with North Pacific Kelp. 

Way you can use Kelp: 

• Ground or Flaked: Add or sprinkle on to food as you would a herb.
• Whole as a Vegetable: if fresh add it to the rest of your recipe as wrap or cut.
• As a snack, dried or rehydrated: you can chop finely and toss it into an iron pan and add coconut oil and your kelp. The mucilage (slime) will disappear.
• As a recipe component: Follow any recipe where you want to add ocean flavour, umami or simply as super food element.

Here's some helpful information on our Kelp to help you along your culinary journey: 

Storing kelp: Store kelp in a dry place away from direct light. Kelp do keep indefinitely but ideally for about two years, although kelp in comparison to other seaweeds; from a flavour viewpoint kelp seem to benefit if kept longer as they become more mature and become sweeter. Believe it or not! Japan still does this maturation process and it's is called Kuragakoi. This can take one or two years to sometimes even 10 years! 

Storing Fresh Kelp: Fresh kelp also keeps well in the freezer. 

Brown Kelps: Brown Kelps can be marinated, lightly steamed and eaten in salads Use as a base to steam and flavour fish-- the combination of food flavours is delicious!  

Mucilage (Slime): The mucilage found in Kelp is edible! It is used in medicine as it relieves irritation of mucous membranes by forming a protective film. It is known to act as a soluble, or viscous, dietary fibre. 

The mucilage content in Giant Kelp is high when it is wet, although, it can be minimized with a cheese cloth to absorb the extra mucilage that you don’t want.

A few benefits of eating kelp mucilage:

The mucilage in Kelp is soothing and cooling to the digestive system. Because of its high natural salts, it has a cleansing action upon the liver, gallbladder, and pancreas, clearing obstructions and toning the organs.

The addition of kelp mucilage to a calorie-reduced diet has been shown to cause greater weight loss and greater reductions in triglyceride and total cholesterol levels than diet alone.

If you still don’t want mucilage in your plate, simply fry or roast your kelp and the  mucilage will not be present!