Ingredients · Other
Nori
Pyropia spp. · Bangiaceae (a red alga)
What it’s like, and how to use it
How to use it
As flakes in shichimi togarashi, over rice and noodles. Toasted briefly over a flame, which makes it crisp and sweetens it. It goes soft the moment it meets moisture, which is why sushi is rolled at the last minute.
With food
Rice above all. Sesame. Soy. Egg. Fish. Cucumber. Green tea.
With spices
Sesame, chile, sansho and orange peel — the shichimi togarashi family. Ginger.
With tea
Sencha, genmaicha and hojicha — nori and Japanese green tea are the same table.
Its story
Where it comes from
Usually made from species of the red algae genus Pyropia, particularly P. yezoensis and P. tenera. Japan gives more than 600 square kilometres of coastal water to producing 350,000 tonnes a year, worth more than a billion dollars. Our lot names no origin.
What happened
Nori owes its survival to a British scientist who never worked on it. After the Second World War the Japanese industry was collapsing, because nobody understood the seaweed's three-stage life cycle and seeding was left to chance. Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker, a phycologist working on a similar Welsh seaweed, published research that Japanese scientists found and applied to artificial seeding and growing. She is known in Japan as the Mother of the Sea, and there is a monument to her in Kumamoto. Japan had not cultivated nori commercially until the 1600s, though it was eaten long before that.
On the shelf with it
Every product it goes into.
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Shichimi Togarashi (Seven Spice)
Regular price From $9.99 CADRegular price
