Dulse substitutes

Toasted laver sheets crushed into flakes, or the ready-made flakes sold as nori komi.

Best for

sprinkling on popcorn, eggs and avocado toast, salads and grain bowls, soups, seasoning fish, finishing rice

The swap most kitchens can make immediately, since a packet of nori sheets crushes into flakes in your hand in about five seconds. The overlap is good: both are savoury, briny and mineral, and both add that sea-vegetable lift that makes a bowl of rice or a soup taste finished. Two differences to plan for. Nori is toastier and slightly sweet where dulse is smoky and saltier, so a dish loses that faint bacon note, and nori carries less sodium, so you may need a pinch more salt. It also softens fast in liquid, so add it at the end rather than early in a soup.

Dried kombu or other kelp ground to a coarse salt-like granule, often sold as a salt substitute.

Best for

seasoning at the table, soups and stews, dressings, seasoning vegetables and grains, replacing some of the salt in a dish

The strongest savoury match, because kelp is the most glutamate-rich seaweed and granules dissolve straight into a dish. What you get is deep umami and real salinity. What you do not get is dulse's smoke or its gentle red-seaweed sweetness, and kelp's iodine flavour is much more pronounced, so a heavy hand tastes medicinal rather than pleasant. Start at half the quantity and taste. Kelp is also very high in iodine, considerably higher than dulse or nori, so it is worth using it as a seasoning in small amounts rather than by the spoonful every day.

A pantry blend aimed at dulse's smoky, savoury, bacon-adjacent flavour rather than at its seaweed character.

Best for

vegan bacon flavour, popcorn, roast potatoes and vegetables, creamy dressings, sprinkling on avocado toast

The right answer when dulse was in the recipe as a vegan bacon substitute, which is much of the reason it has become popular. This trio covers what people actually want from it: smoke from the paprika, salt, and a rounded savoury depth from the yeast. It is honestly unlike dulse in one big respect, which is that there is nothing marine about it at all, so a dish loses the ocean entirely and tastes more like barbecue seasoning. If you want the sea back and have any seaweed in the house, a pinch of nori or a scrape of kombu alongside this blend gets you remarkably close.

Dried wakame crushed or blitzed to a coarse powder rather than left to rehydrate as strands.

Best for

soups and broths, seasoning rice and grains, salads, sprinkling on fish and vegetables

A reasonable option if wakame is what is in the cupboard, though you have to grind it or it will swell into slippery ribbons instead of staying a seasoning. Ground wakame is mild, gently sweet and clean, which makes it easy to use in quantity without overwhelming anything. Set against dulse, it is decidedly quieter: less salt, no smoke, and none of the deep reddish-brown savour, so the dish tastes lightly of the sea rather than distinctly seasoned. Add a pinch of extra salt and consider a tiny amount of smoked paprika to bridge the gap.

A Japanese rice seasoning of nori, toasted sesame, salt, sugar and often bonito or dried fish.

Best for

rice and grain bowls, eggs, popcorn, roast vegetables, salads and noodles

Excellent when dulse flakes were simply being used to make food taste more interesting, which is most of the time. Furikake covers the same territory of salty, savoury, seaweed-tinged seasoning and adds toasted sesame crunch on top, so dishes often taste better rather than merely different. The caveats are that most blends contain sugar, so the flavour is rounder and slightly sweet, many contain bonito or dried fish and are therefore not vegetarian, and all are quite salty, so cut back on any other salt in the dish. It contributes no smoke.

Dried shiitake or porcini blitzed to a fine powder, or a ready-made mushroom seasoning powder.

Best for

soups and stews, gravies and braises, seasoning beans and grains, kitchens with no seaweed at all

The least-bad option when you have no seaweed and the point of the dulse was savoury depth rather than sea flavour. Mushroom powder is genuinely rich in umami and disappears into a soup or a stew, deepening it in a way that reads as more cooked and more meaty. It goes in a different direction from dulse, being earthy and woody rather than briny and mineral, so a broth made with it tastes hearty rather than coastal. In a raw application like a salad or popcorn seasoning it is less convincing, since it tastes faintly of dried mushroom rather than of anything you would sprinkle.