Ogonori

Gracilaria spp. · Seaweed

40 pairings

Ogonori is an edible red seaweed of the genus Gracilaria, harvested for its crunchy, cartilage-like strands and for the agar locked inside its cell walls. Eaten fresh in salads — limu ogo in Hawaiian poke, gulaman in the Philippines, noo-rok in Korea — it is at the same time the world's leading raw material for commercial agar.

Picking a good onedrag

Snapping, evenly coloured, sea-cleanLimp, pink, slippery

Market freshRaw salads, or blanched green for sunomono.Everyday best

Colour to the tipsTips just beginning to pinken

The snapFirm, bends a little before it breaks

The tuftMostly whole, a few short pieces

Smell in the bagFaintly marine, almost neutral

What to look for, from snapping, evenly coloured, sea-clean to limp, pink, slippery.

Keeping ittap a band

A domestic fridge holds it about 1× longer than the counter.

Humidity

95-100%

Keep it wet in seawater or a light brine and lidded: submerged in the dark it held about 30 days in trials, while bare in open air it dries wiry fast.

Airflow

Covered and dark

Light, not stale air, is the enemy: in trials it lifted respiration at cool temperatures and the best keeping was dark, so keep the tub covered and opaque.

Ethylene is not its clock

Ethylene output was measured in stored Gracilaria and tracked nothing - no link to respiration or to any quality change. Light and temperature run it.

Preparing