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NeKKo
Dried cut wakame in close-up on a white plate
  • Sea vegetable
  • わかめ

Wakame

The texture, not the umami.

Flavor profile

Texturesilky texture 75%
Oceanmild ocean tone 60%
Sweetnesslight sweetness 35%
Salinitysaltiness 35%
Umamimild umami 25%

The strengths are editorial judgments on a scale within the family, not measurements. They can be compared across the seaweed and kelp varieties, not directly against another family.

Wakame is the soft brown kelp in miso soup and seaweed salad. It is sold dried or salted, swells to many times its size within minutes in cold water, and brings a silky bite rather than flavor power: measured glutamate runs 2 to 50 mg per 100 g, which is practically nothing next to kombu and nori. Wakame, in other words, is a texture ingredient that happens to taste of the sea, not an umami engine.

Sensory analysis

Pyramid and character

Aroma

from the bag

  • mild kelp
  • ocean

Taste

on the tongue

  • silky sweetness
  • soft ocean tone

Finish

what lingers

  • short
  • clean
  • cooling
UMAMISALINITYOCEAN TONEROASTFRESHNESSTEXTURESWEETNESS

Character 0-100 per axis, set relative to the other entries in the same family. An editorial judgment of a typical serving, not measurements.

Background

Facts

Raw material
brown kelp, Undaria pinnatifida, farmed in Japan since the Nara period in the eighth century
Flavor core
mild, lightly sweet flavor and a silky texture; glutamate 2 to 50 mg per 100 g according to the Umami Information Center
Form
sold dried or salted; dried wakame swells dramatically when soaked
Parts
mekabu is the ruffled holdfast at the base, sold separately, chewier and slimier
Use
miso soup, sunomono and goma wakame (seaweed salad with sesame)
Outside Japan
listed among the IUCN's one hundred worst invasive species in the world, and farmed commercially all the same in France, among other places, since 1983

In the kitchen

Use

Soaking
5 to 10 minutes in cold water, then squeezed out
Amount
one tablespoon of dried wakame is enough for one bowl of soup; it swells fivefold or more
Note
add wakame to the soup last and let it just heat through; boiled, it falls apart and turns slimy

Keep exploring

Related in the Zukan

Evidence

Sources

  1. Wakame (Wikipedia) (retrieved 2026-08-12)
  2. Seafood (Umami Information Center), glutamattabell (retrieved 2026-08-12)
  3. Nekko Journal: Japanskt sjögräs, guiden till sorterna (retrieved 2026-08-12)