How Ireland's chefs are rediscovering the joys of cooking with seaweed

02.09.2023 - 08:11 / nationalgeographic.com

Within the soft, nutty yellow corn tortilla is a slick of piquant, smoky salsa, pan-wilted rainbow chard and a crowning of cheese, finely grated in pale, positively delicate curls. The main bulk of the filling looks and bites like stewed lentils, but the fatty texture and umami complexity is more reminiscent of minced meat, all slow-stewed and jammy. Yet, it’s neither — it’s made from dried seaweed pulp.

“It’s a funny story with this one,” says Sinéad O’Brien, “this was completely accidental and, like most things with seaweed, you’re just experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t.” Sinéad’s mother Cindy is an aquaculture expert, originally from California, but who’s lived in Ireland since the mid-1990s. “One day, Mom made seaweed cookies using sea spaghetti, which she grinds into a pulp,” Sinéad continues, “[she] had some left over, so I suggested we experiment and see what happens, because this could kind of work like minced meat — and it turned out perfect.” 

Together, mother and daughter run Mungo Murphy’s Seaweed Co., an organic aquaculture farm producing seaweed products and abalone, as well as hosting foraging tours. The company’s base is a rocky perch in Connemara, where the Atlantic Ocean meets Galway Bay, on Ireland’s west coast. From Mungo Murphy’s glass-fronted container pod at Keeraunagurk, I can look out onto the moody but pristine water. The waves launch themselves at the shore, putting into perspective the effort and risk of venturing out on fishing vessels, battling storms and swells far from home in order to bring back the spoils of the deep sea. Seaweed, meanwhile, comes quietly, arriving like a gift from the water. It announces its presence when the tide recedes by bobbing on the surface, clinging to rocks and dancing in the wash and backwash. Seaweed just happens. 

Like people, it comes in many shapes and sizes, especially in this rugged part of Ireland, a place sculpted by the ocean. Many have Irish names, too, from rafa (kombu), with its long, ethereal tendrils, to skinny lengths of ríseach (sea spaghetti). Dillisk (sometimes dulse, or duileasc in Irish), which comes in thick, purple strips like coastal pappardelle, is probably Ireland’s most widely used variety. You can also find electric-green sea lettuce, all delicate and translucent; channel wrack, like great tangles of caperberries; and pepper dulse, which has fine, fern-like fronds and has been described by some as ‘the truffle of the ocean’.

“It’s definitely entered the realm of people who are interested in food and looking to experiment with a new ingredient, rather than it just being on high-end restaurant menus,” Sinéad says. She oversees production of products like dried sea spaghetti (which can be rehydrated