Welcome to the future: seaweed sausages are here.
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At Australia-wide barbecues this weekend, hosted by Weber and food charity OzHarvest, the limited-edition lamb sausages will all come with a seaweed casing – and apparently, they don’t taste any different from the regular ones.
“It’s quite discreet,” Weber Grill Expert Laura Romeo told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
“The most important thing, I thought, was the texture. You know how some sausages sometimes have that really rubbery snap-crunch when you eat them? These ones are really soft and nice.”
Seaweed sausages first popped up in the UK in 2015, but have been slow to take off. Supermarket chain Asda appears to be the only place that stocks them, but that might be about to change.
“We’ve heard that some major supermarkets are actually swapping their sausage casings to these as well,” she said.
“The popularity is really rising.”
She worked with South Australian business Slape & Sons to develop the casings, leaning on their expertise of foraging seaweed and turning it into products and meals people want to eat.
Part of the appeal in seaweed casing is the sustainability factor. Unlike collagen casings, seaweed casings don’t require refrigeration and won’t be rejected on size. They’re also tough as hell, Romeo said, and were much less likely to burst during production.
“It would reduce on food wastage,” Romeo said. Cutting food wastage was one of the key changes needed to curb climate change recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – but so was eating less meat, so maybe pick your battles here).
The seaweed sausages are being served on Saturday 9th of November at BBQs across the country, with the aim to raise 60,000 meals for OzHarvest. Find out more here.
