Kelp & Dulse Sea Flakes

Cut coarse rather than milled to dust, these flakes mix olive-green kelp with deep maroon dulse, and smell unmistakably of the shore at low tide — briny and mineral, released fully the moment a pinch is crushed between the fingers. Seaweed has been gathered and eaten along the rocky coasts of Ireland, Brittany, and Atlantic Canada for as long as people have lived beside those particular cold waters. It's an old coastal food, taken as a matter of course to support the body's iodine and broader trace mineral intake, in places where the sea supplied what inland soil could not. Ours is hand-harvested at low tide from wild, unfarmed shoreline, then dried by sun and wind rather than in an oven, a slower method that leaves the iodine content largely intact. Because seaweed readily draws in whatever is in its water, every batch is tested for heavy metals as well as iodine level, and only lots within a tight, expected range are packed and sold. Use it as you would a coarse sea salt — a small pinch over eggs, roasted vegetables, or a pot of soup near the end of cooking. It is potent enough that restraint serves you better than a heavy hand. A taste of the coast, kept in a jar.