Wakame Salad (Japanese Seaweed Salad)

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Learn how to make Japanese wakame seaweed salad at home! This low calorie salad is perfect when paired with a tray of sushi or as a Japanese side dish! 

Table of Contents

• 💡 Good To Know
• 🛒 Ingredients
• 👩‍🍳 Visual Step-by-Step Instructions
• 🫙 Make-Ahead & Storage Instructions
• 🍱 More Asian Recipes
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Comments

Wakame salad is a popular Japanese seaweed salad (also known as Goma Wakame), which is served in every sushi restaurant as an appetizer or part of a bento box. It consists of dried seaweed and a simple Asian dressing. Wakame seaweed tastes rather salty, is somewhat rubbery, crunchy, and usually comes in a translucent green color.

Japanese seaweed salad is super healthy, has hardly any calories, and can easily be prepared at home. All you need is dried wakame seaweed, which you can get either in an Asian store or in a larger grocery store. 

💡 Good To Know

Dried seaweed is very small in volume and super light in weight. You first have to soak it in lukewarm water for about 10 minutes, then it will gain volume and becomes edible. 

You will notice that this salad doesn’t quite has the same vibrant and translucent color as you get in the sushi restaurant, it features a rather dark green color. The reason for this is that these salads you can get at any Japanese restaurant are prepared with fresh or frozen wakame, which unfortunately is not available in every country. However, the salad tastes super delicious even with dried wakame seaweed!

If you have any chance to get fresh or frozen seaweed, please go ahead and use it to prepare this recipe. 

Wakame is a sea vegetable and type of brown algae that grows in salt water. That is why it tastes very salty. It has a rubbery texture, is low in calories and low in fat, provides many vitamins, nutrients, minerals, and iodine. It is also often used in miso soup.

🛒 Ingredients

See recipe card for quantities.

• Wakame → Dried wakame seaweed is available in Asia Shops or in larger supermarkets. Must be soaked in lukewarm water before using.
• Roasted Sesame Seeds → Provide a great crunch and nutty flavor! 
• Dressing: Soy Sauce, Rice Vinegar, Sesame Oil, Maple Syrup, Grated Ginger → Those ingredients make for an aromatic Japanese dressing. Rice vinegar can be replaced with lime juice. As seaweed is already particularly salty, the sauce only needs a splash of added soy sauce. 

Extra Flavor – add some grated or finely chopped garlic to the salad! Also tastes delicious topped with finely chopped green onion.

Do you like it spicy? Then top the whole thing with Japanese chili oil (Layu) – I love this twist!

👩‍🍳 Visual Step-by-Step Instructions

This visual step-by-step instruction will help you along the way – definitely recommended if you’re a cooking beginner! 😉

• Place dried wakame seaweed with plenty of lukewarm water in a large bowl and let it soak for 10 minutes. Drain over a seed and squeeze out excess water with your hands. → This prevents the dressing from becoming too watery.

• Mix all dressing ingredients in a small bowl.
• Add wakame seaweed, dressing, and sesame seeds in a bowl and toss well. 

Hint: I love to let the wakame salad sit in the fridge for 1 hour before serving!

🫙 Make-Ahead & Storage Instructions

Wakame salad doesn’t get mushy, therefore you can easily make it ahead of time. I love to let the salad sit for a bit in the refrigerator, this way the seaweed soaks up a little more flavor from the dressing. 

Store leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Stays fresh for 2 days.

🍱 More Asian Recipes

• Bean Sprout Salad
• Asian Slaw
• Asian Cucumber Salad
• Asian Noodle Salad with Peanut Dressing

📖 Recipe