Recipe: Wakame Salad with Spicy Dressing
Recently on my trip to Hong Kong I found some dried wakame seaweed at a very reasonable price. It would have cost 10x more in the UK, so obviously I took the opportunity to stock up. You may already be familiar with wakame as the little green bits in miso soup, or as the briny seaweed in Japanese side dishes or salads. I’ve written about the benefits of eating seaweed — do check out my Chinese Vegan 101 Guide to Edible Seaweed if you haven’t already. Wakame and other sea vegetables provide a multitude of benefits, being a concentrated source of iron, calcium, and manganese as well as omega–3 fatty acids — all while being low in calories and full of umami flavour. Perfect if you are trying to eat less. These nutritional benefits are very useful to vegans who may not find such minerals elsewhere. They may also have thyroid regulating and metabolism boosting properties.
However, as with all good things, it is recommended that you don’t overdo the seaweed. 5g of dried seaweed per day is apparently enough; and furthermore, you need to be careful when choosing pre–prepared salads that are bright green: these have added food colouring and the true colour should be a dull brown!
So here is my recipe for a very simple vegan wakame salad with a healthy, zingy dressing that you can customise to your taste. I used just one tablespoon of dried wakame, which expands a lot when rehydrated, and tossed it with leftover vegetables that I had to hand. I think it would work just as well with shredded carrots or radishes, cucumber, cherry tomatoes or beetroot.
Let me know if you try this recipe and share your results on Instagram with #CelestialPeach.
Ingredients
1 tbsp dried wakame
1 red pepper, thinly sliced
1 cup cooked edamame beans
For the dressing:
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp sesame seeds
2 tsp chilli powder (here I used Korean gochugaru or chilli powder – you can substitute with other powders or flakes)
1 tsp grated ginger
Pinch of sugar
Instructions
Rehydrate the wakame in a bowl of water. It should be fully rehydrated within a few minutes.
Drain the wakame and extract as much water as possible. Mix with the other salad ingredients.
Whisk all the dressing ingredients together and toss with the salad.
