I did it, I finally got around to making Sweet Beet and Green Been’s Raw Seaweed Salad.
When I first started to concoct this post friday night, I was debating between a title of WTF and OMG!? (grammatically advanced, I know, ha). However, I decided I would let the seaweed salad marinate overnight before deciding to publicly announce my hatred for wakame.
I’ve had seaweed salad a dozen plus times at restaurants, but I’ve never attempted to make my own. So when I set out Friday night to make this recipe, I just naively assumed that I would open a bag of wakame and out would come the same shredded/gelatinous mixture that I had come accustomed to eating. Not so much the case, as the wakame ended up being a much darker seaweed cut in square-like chunks. I believe this discrepancy is what initially threw me for a somewhat negative loop.
So any who, after marinating for 12 hours, I was pleasantly surprised to experience a more toned down flavor saturday morning. In fact, I found myself addictively grazing on it throughout the day yesterday. So while I’m still on the search for the string type of seaweed served at the restaurants, I’m extremely excited in the meantime to find such a palatable recipe for wakame. Plus, It’s a really pretty dish!
So why, like millions of Americans, would I not just write off seaweed in my diet and forgo finding a way to make it enjoyable? Well, that’s easy, because seaweed is an extraordinary food for our bodies. Seaweed contains all of the minerals required by our bodies, including: calcium, sodium, magnesium (mood boosting), potassium, iodine (thyroid stimulating), iron, and zinc (antioxidant). In addition, an edible sea plant (such as wakame) also contains important vitamins including vitamin A, B1, B2, B6, niacin, vitamin C, pantothenic acid, and folic acid. Another incredible attribute to seaweed is that it also contains trace amounts of vitamin B12, which rarely occurs in land vegetables… It’s definitely an undeniable super-food!
