Seaweed

Join food journalist Lee Tran Lam to explore Australia’s foodways. Leading Australian food producers, creatives and innovators reveal the complex stories behind ingredients found in contemporary kitchens across Australia – Milk, Eel, Honey, Mushrooms, Wine and Seaweed.

When you skip by seaweed on the beach or crunch into nori wrapped sushi rolls, you're interacting with something that also exists as billion year old fossils. In lutruwita/Tasmania, palawa people have crafted bull kelp water carriers for millennia, and from Ireland to Japan, seaweed’s been a culinary ingredient, a cough remedy and a way to pay taxes. Nowadays, this versatile alga gets shaped into sushi rolls, musical instruments, plastic alternatives, and could be a powerful tool in combating climate change.

Lee Tran Lam Powerhouse acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the ancestral homelands upon which our museums are situated. We pay respects to Elders, past and present, and recognise their continuous connection to Country. This episode was recorded on Gadigal, Kaurna, Peramangk and Bundjalung Country.

My name is Lee Tran Lam and you're listening to season two of the Culinary Archive Podcast, a series from Powerhouse Museum.

Located in Sydney, Powerhouse is the largest museum group in Australia. It sits at the intersection of the arts, design, science and technology, with over half a million objects in its collection including ; a century ago; and a The collection charts our evolving connection to food.