All the recipes I’ve found for sushi restaurant style seaweed salad call for wakame seaweed. I ordered some, but this is not the right kind! Wakame is the kind used in miso soup. Flat, thin, kinda slimy, very dark green. The seaweed salad kind is stringy and slightly translucent, ranges from grass green to light green, but I cannot find any other answer or where to get it from. Can anyone point me to the right kind of seaweed?
First pic is what I’m looking for, 2nd pic is the wrong stuff I ordered that said wakame.
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It’s just cut into slices
Possibly Kuki-Wakame which is wakame stem?
These are the stems of wakame seaweed (Undaria pinnatifida), a cheaper byproduct of stripping off the wakame leaves (the softer seaweed in miso soup and ramen) to sell to japan/korea. Usually imported from Dong-Oh Foods (ROK) or Dailong (China).
It is Wakame. It is only the stalk, sliced thinly.
The seaweed for this specific salad isn’t available commercially. Wakame is a poor substitute.
Pretty sure it’s mekabu.
[It’s this](https://store.edenfoods.com/mekabu-wakame-sea-vegetable/) as /u/itchykneesun_ noted, but you can easily buy the whole salad premade wholesale; [this](https://www.azumagourmet.com/products/seaweed-salad.html) has been available at every costco I’ve been to (in the open refrigerated section with salsas, dips, pesto), but there are other suppliers.
I was told this isn’t even really a Japanese food… it was invented in China or Korea and is mostly a thing in non-Japanese sushi places.
Fuck if I know it ain’t Japanese.
It’s wakame. The bright green is from dye.
You can buy wakame cut up for salads online.
The first salad really gets stuck in my teeth and I don’t like it.
I work in a Japanese restaurant and this stuff comes frozen in a bag. If you read the ingredients you probably don’t want to eat it anymore
The term I’ve heard for it is “chuka wakame”, in other words, Chinese wakame.
I’ve never actually seen it in Japan though, just in the west. Imho you can make better things with regular wakame (the stuff you bought) anyway.
I believe it’s called goma wakame.
You can still use the wakame you bought in a Japanese style salad: soak one or two tbsp of wakame in cold water until plump, then rince. Toss in a bowl with avocado, cucumber, corn and some lettuce, all chopped up. My favorite dressing with this salad is wafu dressing (grated onion, soy sauce, sugar, rice vinegar, neutral flavored oil, sesame seeds, black pepper). You can add other vegetables you like.
First