Species sheet · The Edible Ocean
wakame
The miso soup seaweed, and one of Europe's worst invaders.
- Rehydrated in miso soup
- In a sesame salad
- Blanched and cut into fine ribbons
- Scientific name
- Undaria pinnatifida
- In the water
- Anchored by a holdfast on the lower shore and in sheltered shallows, harbours and floating structures; mostly at 1 to 3 m.
- Season & buying
- February to May off Brittany, where the seaweed has gone wild; pick a firm blade, deep brown-green, never slimy or yellowing along the midrib.
- Common length
- ~150 cm
- How to identify it
- Large supple blade cut into lobes
Thick, smooth central midrib
Olive brown, bright green once blanched
On the plate
Supple and mild, a discreet marine taste that covers nothing.
Avoid: Boiling it: thirty seconds in hot water is enough, beyond that it goes limp.
Introduced to Brittany in 1983 for farming, it escaped within two years and is now among the hundred most invasive species in the world. We eat it, for want of a better answer.
In Umay recipes
4 Umay recipes call for it.
