What is seaweed salt?

Flaky sea salt blended with milled dried seaweed — usually one part seaweed to three or four parts salt. The seaweed brings umami, minerals and colour, so a pinch seasons more deeply than salt alone and you end up using less of it.

How do you use seaweed salt?

Anywhere a finishing salt goes: eggs, chips, tomatoes, butter, popcorn, the rim of a Bloody Mary glass, and over fish and dark chocolate desserts. Add it at the end — cooking it long dulls the sea-fresh notes.

Is seaweed salt lower in sodium?

Pinch for pinch, yes — a quarter to a third of the crystal salt is replaced by seaweed, and the umami means food tastes fully seasoned with less. It is a genuinely useful trick for cutting salt without cutting flavour.

Seaweed Salt — How to Make It

Q: Which seaweed makes the best salt?

Dulse gives a smoky, almost bacon-like salt; sugar kelp gives sweet umami depth; pepper dulse — the truffle of the sea — makes the most precious jar of all. Blends work: two parts dulse to one of kelp is our kitchen standard.

By Jayson Byles, forager & chef · August 2026

Seaweed salt is flaky sea salt cut with milled dried seaweed — the simplest seaweed recipe there is, and the one that changes how people cook. The seaweed carries glutamates, minerals and a breath of the shore, so a pinch does more than salt alone ever could. One jar from one low tide seasons a season of cooking.

The recipe

Take well-dried seaweed — dried until it snaps. Dulse, sugar kelp or pepper dulse are the ones to reach for.
Blitz or grind it to coarse flakes — a spice grinder, a blender, or a pestle and knuckle-work all do the job.
Blend one part seaweed with three to four parts flaky sea salt. Taste as you go — dulse can carry a 1:3 blend; stronger kelps sit better at 1:4.
Jar it airtight. It keeps its best for six months — though it rarely survives that long.

Tasting dried dulse on the shore — Dulse — the smoky backbone of a good seaweed salt

Which seaweed makes the best salt?

Dulse — smoky, savoury, faintly of bacon. The all-rounder, and the jar we give as gifts.
Sugar kelp — sweet, deep umami; the kombu move. Best blended rather than solo.
Pepper dulse — the truffle of the sea makes a truffle salt of the sea: intense, garlicky, precious. Use a 1:4 blend and guard the jar.

How to use it

Anywhere a finishing salt earns its place: fried eggs, chips, ripe tomatoes, roast potatoes, popcorn, worked into butter, over white fish, and — trust us — on dark chocolate and caramel puddings. Season at the end of cooking; long heat dulls the fresh sea notes you worked for.

The best jars start with the right frond, cut on the right tide. Come and learn which is which on the shore — or start with the e-book, Thriving in the Intertidal.

Seaweed Salt

The recipe

Which seaweed makes the best salt?

How to use it

Notes from the shore