Kelp & Sea Moss: A Local Look at the Global Rise

by Kendra Parker.

If you live in Southeastern Massachusetts, there’s a good chance you’ve had a personal experience with seaweed. Perhaps you’ve taken a trip to the beach and can’t find a good spot to lay down your towel due to the seaweed, kelp, and shells deposited at the wrack line. Maybe you’ve gone swimming and resorted to wearing water shoes so you aren’t stepping on seaweed and rocks at the bottom of the sea. You may even have screamed when out in the water and something frightening touched your leg. (It was seaweed; it’s always seaweed.)

We’ve all had these sorts of encounters with seaweed, but have you ever had it on your plate? Most people haven’t, but eating seaweeds, kelps, and other ocean mosses is becoming more prevalent. For those who have eaten seaweed, it’s often nori, which is used to wrap up sushi rolls, or wakame, the traditional seaweed in seaweed salad. The one other somewhat familiar seaweed is kelp, or kombu, as it’s known in Japanese cooking. This is often used to make flavorful broths. Kelp has an intense umami flavor and can be added to beans and salads.

The big question is: Why are people eating seaweed anyway? First of all, once you get past the idea of eating your childhood nemesis, the slimy stuff that washed up on beaches or terrorized you in the ocean, it’s delicious. Seaweed is salty and briny—a truly delightful culinary experience. (Trust me on this one!) A good seaweed salad is one of my favorite meals when ordering Japanese food. Second, it’s a nutritional powerhouse. Seriously. Eat seaweed for your health. It’s a fantastic source of iodine, which is needed for thyroid function. It is packed with antioxidants, which are important to fight oxidative stress in your cells. Seaweed also contains prebiotics, which help to feed probiotics, keeping your gut healthy.

Additionally, seaweed is good for the environment. Whether farmed or grown naturally, it helps to remove excess nitrogen from the water. Too much nitrogen can cause algal blooms, closing beaches and killing marine life. Seaweed is also quick to grow and sequesters carbon from the ocean, theoretically reducing ocean acidification. It requires no land or freshwater to grow, so it is an easy and healthy crop to harvest. Bioplastics and biofuels can also be made from seaweed. Cows fed seaweed with their normal feed generate significantly less methane, one of our most harmful greenhouse gases. Everybody wins!

While we haven’t identified a SE MA purveyor of fresh kelp, I stumbled across a new kind of seaweed when checking out a recently opened grocery store in my area. The store itself has a lot of Cape Verdean as well as Central and South American offerings. I found a bag of Irish Sea Moss tucked in with some Jamaican products. It looked somewhat like a bag of salty, wet spaghetti. The package boasted incredible nutritional properties:

Irish moss contains 92 of the 102 minerals that our bodies need, with vitamins A, B, C, D, E, and K. It is especially rich in calcium and iodine, as well as containing potassium iodine and potassium bromide, selenium, zinc, and natural silica. Not only is it very beneficial to the bones, joints, and skin, helping to maintain bone strength and skin elasticity, it can also be applied topically to moisten and nourish skin and hair.

Irish moss energizes the body and is used in the Caribbean as an aphrodisiac to increase energy and libido. Because it is so mineral-rich, it is possible for one to survive on only Irish moss for prolonged periods of time. The Irish relied on it as a staple during the potato famine of the 19^th century.

Interesting.

So I put it in my cart and decided to do a little more research upon returning home. I went down a sea moss rabbit hole. I learned that Irish sea moss is also called carrageenan moss. A heavily processed form of carrageenan is often used as a thickener; you can find it as an ingredient in ice cream, plant-based milks, and other processed foods. Sea moss is often made into a gel form, is very popular in the health food world, and many people add it daily to smoothies, yogurt, and even coffee. It can be quite expensive to purchase, $25–$50 for a 16-ounce jar. My fairly large bag of unprocessed sea moss was only $6.99.

Irish moss beverages became popular in the Caribbean when Irish immigrants flocked to the islands during the potato famine, hence why I found this strange ingredient in an ethnic grocery store. The Irish also harvested this moss right here in Southeastern Massachusetts, with Scituate being one of the larger producers. The Irish tended to add the moss to beer and puddings.

At this point, I decided I’d go through the process of making sea moss gel. I soaked the sea moss in cold water with a little lime juice for a few hours, rinsed it, and soaked it again overnight. In the morning, I thoroughly rinsed the moss and did not submerge it, and blended until it was a smooth gel. It just about filled the blender when done processing, and I had an additional batch to do as well. I froze most of it but kept one large container in the fridge to make drinks with, and also to use as a face mask, something I read online that stuck about half of it in a blender. I covered it with water, but it was worth the hype! My skin was super soft and plump after 15 minutes of sea moss gel on my face.

There was a recipe for Irish moss beverage on the package I had purchased, but it contained a few ingredients I didn’t have at home, so I improvised based on some recipes I found online. I hope you’ll step out of your comfort zone and try this refreshing Caribbean-inspired beverage! If you have had horchata before, this is reminiscent. Not ready to cook with seaweed yourself? Start with an order of seaweed salad next time you place a takeout sushi order.