Everyone is all excited about a seaweed that apparently tastes like bacon. I’m not even remotely enthusiastic about this new discovery. Maybe it’s the cynic in me. Maybe because it makes zero sense and isn’t remotely possible.
Oregon State University researcher Chris Langdon has been studying a seaweed called “Dulse” for the last 15 years. It’s a leafy red seaweed that grows along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Dulse (Even the name sounds like it’s going to taste disgusting) is considered a super-food that is packed with minerals, vitamins and antioxidants and contains up to 16 percent protein by dry weight.
“Dulse has twice the nutritional value of kale,” Toombs said. Ah kale, the food that every touts to be the key to living a long life, but tastes like oak tree leaves that have racoon shit smeared on them.
“In Europe, they add [dulse] powder to smoothies, or add flakes onto food,” Langdon said. “There hasn’t been a lot of interest in using it in a fresh form. But this stuff is pretty amazing. When you fry it, which I have done, it tastes like bacon, not seaweed. And it’s a pretty strong bacon flavor.”
HOLD ON RIGHT FUCKING THERE. You wanna tell the world how amazingly healthy these ocean weeds are, then please be my guest. But don’t go blatantly misrepresenting the taste of this vegetation to appeal to the masses because everyone loves bacon. That’s just sacrilegious.
There’s no way this tastes like mouthwatering, greasy bacon. Even if you cooked dulse (Ughh that name) with bacon, then drenched it in bacon vodka and then slathered it with bacon mayonnaise, this plant would not taste like bacon.
When is the last time you ate ANY shitty, green salad and thought it tasted like glorious meat? Have you ever sliced up some celery and screamed in joy, “OH MY GOD THIS CELERY TASTES JUST LIKE PORK BELLY!” Have you ever once cooked up some swiss chard and pumped your fist in jubilation because it has the same smoky, fatty flavor of delicious pastrami? No? That’s because they’re fucking plants and not yummy animals.
What do pigs eat? Delicious sweet corn and pretty much anything else they can get their lil piggy snouts on. What does seaweed eat? Fish turds and sunlight for photosynthesis. So how the fuck are they going to taste the same? You do realize that mammals which are quite similar to pigs don’t even taste remotely as delicious as bacon. So how the fuck is this plant that lives in an entirely different environment, eating entirely different nutrients going to taste like a land animal? Sounds like some shady-ass marketing ploy for me to eat shitty seaweed.
Stop trying to make vegetables happen. It’s not going to happen.