Edible Seaweeds - An ancient food harvested by humans for millennia, seaweeds bring an intense and rich flavour of the sea to a wide range of dishes, as well as essential mind-and-body-boosting nutrients

An ancient food harvested by humans for millennia, seaweeds bring an intense and rich flavour of the sea to a wide range of dishes, as well as essential mind-and-body-boosting nutrients

- By Sonya Patel Ellis

If you're ever swum in the ocean or dabbled in rockpools you'll have interacted with a range of 'plants' actually types of macroalgae - known as seaweed. As well as providing feasts for crustaceans, most of the 600-plus species found in the UK are also edible for we humans.

How to identify and pick

These plant-like algae can be found year-round, but are more bountiful in spring and summer, and at low tide when more shore is exposed. Thriving populations are in sheltered locations, where they are not at the mercy of battering waves. Most of our seaweeds need a firm substrate on which to anchor, so rocky shores provide richer pickings.