A Quick and Easy Guide to Processing Kelps and Seaweeds

It's seaweed harvesting season in Oregon! And it's important to know how to process and store your harvest for future use, to extend the amount of time in a year we can eat our favorite wild foods!

Unless I want a fresh kelp salad right off the beach, most of the seaweeds that I forage during the Oregon seaweed foraging season (March 1 - June 15) are being dried. You don’t need any fancy machinery to dry them! I dry my seaweeds in order to grind them down for seasonings, to be rehydrated for salad in future use, or simply to put into soups and stocks! The process is not super complicated, but I’ve definitely learned some easier tricks while doing this over the years. Keep reading to learn!