(jaunty music)
- Basically any of the seaweeds are edible.
The only time you wanna avoid it is
if the water quality is poor.
Anything that could be a potential hazard with the water
will be a hazard with the seaweed, for sure.
But the ones that are washed up on the beach,
I wouldn't eat that, personally.
I'm Jacob, chef at Erizo in Portland, Oregon.
We're here in Port Orford on the Southern Oregon coast,
about to harvest some wild seaweeds.
(bright music)
So we're gonna harvest a lot of these things and dry them,
preserve them for the year,
and we're just gonna take you around here
and show you all the different varieties of seaweed,
what the uses are.
And then we're gonna cook some of it up.
(water gurgles)
This is one of the most simple intertidal harvesting
processes that exists here.
Basically all that you need is a pair of scissors, a basket.
You need a shellfish permit in some states.
Find a rocky area and a low tide, and go out.
(birds caw)
So the first seaweed that we've harvested here,
this is a type of kelp.
This is called wakame.
This is really common in a commercial market.
You can find this in almost any grocery store dried.
You can tell this one pretty easily
because it has all the ribs running through it
and the bubbles in the fronds.
This seaweed can kind of become an issue,
and it can become extremely invasive
in areas where it's been introduced by people.
What happens is that it grows so rapidly
in areas where it's not expected to be,
that it really out competes a lot
of the other algaes and seaweeds.
And also it can even smother creatures
after the tide goes out, and it sort of covers everything.
(suspenseful music)
This is rockweed, really flavorful, seaweed.
It has a really tough texture, though.
We actually use this at the restaurant.
We dry it, and then we'll grill it
until it's super caramelized,
and then we make a flavored oil out of it.
All of this is just one bunch,
and it's all anchored to the central holdfast here.
Cut down the center here,
and just cut a couple pieces away
from the main branch without severing any of it.
So you're still leaving the entire main branch intact.
You're just kinda trimming some off the side
like you would prune a tree.
(suspenseful music)
- This is called nori, and this is what they use
to make the sheets for sushi, all that kinda stuff.
It's not used in this state when it's made into sheets.
It's usually ground and then I'm pressed and dried.
It's also just completely edible just right off the rocks.
We're just gonna grab a small handful like that,
and you can just see how beautiful that is,
really shiny, really clean.
(suspenseful music)
This is another type of kelp.
So this is called the feather boa kelp.
Super easy kelp here to identify.
You can just see this sort of
almost like a leather belt running through the middle of it,
and then all of these fronds come off.
That's where it gets the name.
That help it kind of come up to the surface
when the tide comes in,
and we're just gonna clip this like 24 inches
from the holdfast here.
It's really good.
This is a really, really sweet kelp,
amazing for drying and using for broth.
(suspenseful music)
This is a winged kelp, really similar to the feather boa,
as you can see, cause it has the rib running down the middle
as far as how to identify it.
And then it's just gonna be a lot more golden
and almost translucent,
that rib that runs through it compared to the feather boa,
which is a lot more leathery.
And then the sides here are just really thin
and tender and translucent,
and this is a one of the types of kelp
that you can eat really simply, just blanched.
I'm just gonna cut it right here,
about two feet from there.
And then this is the harvestable piece.
Most of the ends of them are all beat up,
and don't worry about that at all.
It doesn't affect them in any way.
Almost the ends of all of these are tattered,
and it's just because of the way that the tide comes in here
and whips them around.
(water splashes)
(bright music)
So here we have a bullwhip kelp.
It's one of the largest varieties of kelp.
It's essentially a giant, almost like a trunk
that grows up from the bottom.
As you can see out here,
you have a lot of these little
that kinda look like seals out here,
but they're actually just heads of these giant bulbs.
And then it has all these fronds that grow off of the end.
And this kelp stays here almost the whole year.
It is an annual, but it's one of the more hardy seaweeds
that lasts the longest.
The reason why this is called bullwhip kelp is because
of the stem that comes down from the bulb
to the bottom kinda resembles a whip.
So we have our fronds that are attached
to the bulb right here.
Kinda just giving the kelp haircut.
(bright music)
(wind whips)
This is gonna happen like every minute,
a bigger series of waves, so heads up
for your camera or whatever.
It's not gonna be anything huge.
It might just be a little (whistles) swell, you know?
So these are the bull kelp fronds
that we harvested off of the bulb that we pulled up.
This kelp is really delicious.
It's actually pretty tender as is,
but it's kind of off-putting
'cause the texture is a little bit slimy.
You can just blanch it really quickly
anywhere between 10 and 30 seconds,
depending on the thickness.
The best way that I think to do is to dry these fronds.
Lay them out individually, either over a bar or on a rack,
and just dry 'em right in the sun.
(bright music)
There's two of 'em.
(whale blows)
(bright music)
- [Producer] That was f****** whale breath in my mouth.
- [Producer] That's disgusting.
- Well, that's not every day you get to see that.
- [Producer] It was in my mouth.
- Yeah, that was really stinky.
That was like a fart, I think.
That was so cool and so gross at the same time.
I've never experienced anything like that.
Like that was really stinky.
We're like, "Oh, this is so majestic."
And they were like, "Wait, is that s***?" (laughs)
We'll just walk back up to the port,
and we're gonna prepare a broth
that's made from some of the fresh seaweeds we've gathered,
as well as some of the same species
that we've also dried here pretty quickly in the sun.
So first, we have some Columbia River smelt.
They've been cured.
Next, we have dried squid.
And then we also have some shiitaki mushrooms,
which we've grilled.
And then we dehydrate those, as well.
And we have some Pacific surf muscles
that we have gathered out here.
We're gonna use these to fortify our broth.
And then we're also gonna use a few fresh seaweeds
that are really fibrous ones.
So we have these different kelps here,
including the rockweed
and then also some of our bull kelp frond.
So it's really important that we keep this off
as we add these 'cause we want to bring this up
from cold, fresh water
so then basically by the time that the water is really hot,
they're done steeping.
We're also gonna add some seaweed
that we've dried here really quickly in the sun.
This the winged kelp here.
I'm just gonna throw that right on top.
And then we also have the kombu.
(kombu crackles)
Just kind of crush that up and add it right here on top,
just a nice big sheet.
And then we also have that feather boa kelp
that was dried with the floats.
So we left everything included.
That's just gonna go right on top here.
(stove clicks)
One of the things that you gotta be really careful of
when you're making broth with seaweed
and these delicate dried ingredients,
not cooking it too much.
So we've brought this just up under a boil.
It's got a beautiful golden color.
All the seaweed has rehydrated.
We're gonna let this steep
for 15 minutes off of the heat.
(bright music)
Okay, so now our broth has steeped.
It's cooled off slightly, not very much.
We're gonna go ahead and put it back on the heat.
(stove bangs)
Take our fresh seaweed, the rockweed here
and our fresh bull kelp frond.
We're gonna add that in as well,
just kinda right on top.
And then we're gonna take our muscles
and just nestle these in.
You can kinda use your kelp to cover those muscles
so they steam.
So as you can see, that kelp just turns bright green
as soon as it cooks just for a second.
Our muscles have all opened up.
The broth is nice and hot.
It's just under a boil.
You can see some lazy bubbles coming to the surface.
We're gonna set up another small pot and strainer here.
(bright music)
Typically, this is gonna be lacking salt,
surprisingly enough.
Even though we are using all seafood here,
the only thing that really has a significant amount
of natural salinity is gonna be the seaweed.
So we actually are gonna use our seaweed salt.
This salt here, this is made by us.
This is a traditional Japanese technique
where they take seawater,
reduce it down and pack it filled with seaweed
to sort of infuse into the water,
and then the salt is dried and finished.
We have our bull kelp that was blanched really briefly.
Just gonna julienne that.
Put it in our mug.
We're just gonna finish with a little bit of olive oil here
right on top, and that's it.
(lively music)
Ah (beep).
- Yeah, that's pretty hot, it's f****** good.
The way that I was introduced to harvesting wild seaweed
for culinary use is when I first started going out
to the Oregon Coast to explore
and try to find new ingredients and meet fishermen
and kind of just get more connected to the ingredients
that we use,
we kinda just started picking it
and just testing every which way.
That's the only way that you can learn how to use stuff.
You just gotta taste it and figure out what works.