Bacon Seaweed Is An Ancient European Snack, And We’re Just Hearing About This Now?

Apparently, Europe has been keeping secrets from America. For centuries, they’ve been snacking on bacon-flavored seaweed and haven’t bothered to tell anyone.

Thankfully, a team of scientists at Oregon State University uncovered this valuable culinary secret, which could transform your salad dressing, crackers, and untold other food products very soon, NBC News reported.

Bacon seaweed is a real, naturally-occurring phenomenon, pretty much proving God exists. It’s a red seaweed called dulse and grows in the waters along northern coastlines of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, Live Science added.

The Irish have been nibbling on it for years, health food stores worldwide carry it, and across Europe, its powder is sprinkled into smoothies and flakes of it shaken onto food, fisheries professor Chris Langdon said.

“There hasn’t been a lot of interest in using it in a fresh form. But this stuff is pretty amazing.”

This seaweed is amazing because it’s super healthy — you may even call it a super food, and nudge kale out of your diet. The algae is packed with protein, minerals, and vitamins A and C. And the best part?

“When you fry it, which I have done, it tastes like bacon, not seaweed. And it’s a pretty strong bacon flavor.”

That’s right — now, you can eat all the “bacon” you want without all the fat, guilt, and pig slaughter. If that wasn’t awesome enough, this special seaweed is also easy on the environment.

Usually, dulse is harvested in the wild, then dried out and sold for a whopping $90 a pound. The team at OSU had been growing it for 15 years to feed a sea snail called abalone; their original goal was to grow more of the red algae exclusively for the snails, and so began to experiment.

Eventually, they domesticated the lettucelike plant, patenting their strain, and experimented with growing methods; now, they grow it hydroponically. If dulse is grown in water, instead of soil, more of it can be grown faster, meaning it’ll be much cheaper.

Right now, OSU is harvesting up to 30 pounds a week in a two large tanks. They plan to eventually up that amount to 100 pounds of dulse. And it can grow anywhere — all you need is seawater and sunshine.

Obviously, this seaweed has commercial appeal, and OSU business professor Chuck Toombs has gotten on board to figure out how to bring the wonderful plant, both raw and dried, to a food product near you. So far, bacon-flavored crackers and salad dressing may be in our future.

“We now have about five products that we think will be very good commercial products. This stuff grows, under the right conditions, five times as fast as anything else.”

Guilt-free, healthy bacon? It sounds too good to be true.

[Photo Courtesy Twitter]