Taste Test: Sea beans

Last week, my cousin and I went to a lovely dinner party hosted by forageSF, a wild foods community in San Francisco. One of the eight courses was a green salad with beets and foraged sea beans. It was the first time I've ever eaten sea beans. They are a delightful addition to my growing list of favorite greens.

I've seen wild sea beans growing along the coast of Northern California, but I never knew they were actually good to eat. Even after they're washed and coated in dressing, they sustain the aroma of the salty ocean — they have a really unique crunch to them, too, almost like they're fried. The flavor? I'd say it's a cross between string beans, asparagus, and potato chips. Delicious!

The official name for sea beans is salicornia (it's the only word I know that rhymes with California!) but they're also known as pickleweed, glasswort, drift seeds, sea asparagus, sea pickles, and marsh samphire.

Sea beans have been around forever, but it's only recently that we've started to see them pop up at farmer's markets and at local grocery stores. There are a lot of fancy ways to prepare sea beans, like this black roasted cod with sea beans and oysters recipe on Epicurious — inspired by the movie Mostly Martha — but I would suggest simply sauteeing or boiling them just to enjoy the full effect of the veggie on its own.

Every installment of Taste Test will explore recipes, the science, and some history behind a specific food item.

Image via Migraine Meals

• [Anonymous]

  Get ready to see the shore stripped clean of them? Seems like anytime there is a natural product trend some greedy ass decides to get rich quick by grabbing every one they can (wild ginsing, poachers, orchids, etc).

  On the plus side it sounds like a plant that can thrive in salty conditions. Something to keep in mind when you consider that more agricultural land in CA is getting salty from irrigation. It might also be good for brackish areas and shorelines that cannot grow anything else.

• [Flashman]

  That stuff is pretty ubiquitous – it’s very common in South Africa too, and I’ve seen it in the Mediterranean. Perhaps because my parents are botanists I’ve only ever known it as Salicornia.
  But like a lot of things that are tasty to munch on out in the bush, it’s nice to nibble on but I can’t imagine tucking into a whole plate of it – maybe cooking tempers the saltiness a bit?

• [Anonymous]

  The guy at my local farmers market calls it Sea Asparagus, and I just rinse it in water to get some of the extra salt off, then throw straight into a salad for some crunch and flavour. Delicious!

• [amycamus]

  Zuni Cafe in San Francisco has been serving sea beans as an accompaniment to various main dishes for years. They’re not always on the menu, but it’s always a treat when they are.

• [Lauren O]

  I remember trying this while on a field trip to some Northern Californian coast as a kid. They called it pickleweed. It was good! I didn’t realize people actually used it in dishes. I’d like to try it in a dish. Pity I don’t live in NorCal anymore. I doubt it grows in central Texas…

• [thedave]

  Horny, duh.

• [Felton]

  it’s the only word I know that rhymes with California

  Only because Unicornia hasn’t been officially established yet.

  That said, these look tasty. I’m not sure how easy they are to get here in Georgia, though.

  • [Anonymous]

    I get them at Harry’s Whole Foods on Powers Ferry Road. Take the highway 120 exit off I-75. to Powers Ferry Road then hang a left, about a mile.

• [VieDeChatte]

  In SouthEastern New Brunswick (Canada), we Acadians call them Tétines de souris, which translates to, erm, mice tits.

• [Anonymous]

  “Cornea.”

• [Atvaark]

  In France, one way of keeping and eating salicornes is to prepare them like pickles, with vinegar and spices.

  • [lewis stoole]

    these sound like they would be awesome pickled. i’ve had pickled string beans and asparagus, and potato chips are great with salt an vinegar. all three at once with pickling spice must be amazing.

• [Edward]

  Mentioned in Shakespeare (King Lear), one variety (at least) can be found on the Maine coast (the only place I’ve spotted it). Had it years ago for lunch in a very good London restaurant with a small mound of fresh picked crab–devastatingly delicious!

  Like ramps (wild leek), it’s pretty abundant, has become a modestly popular garnish or ingredient in some upmarket eating places, but (IMHO) remains sufficiently esoteric that modest levels of harvesting are not going to impact populations. Probably saw far more harvest in the 18th century and before than at the present time.

• [Anonymous]

  Did somebody say Sea Beams?

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_saUN4j7Gw

• [Anonymous]

  Just hoping that not too many people read this and then go out and destroy entire ecosystems.

  Wild food is fine, but a certain amount of ‘respect’ is involved: in areas close to large human concentrations, the harvesting of wild food can be an AFD: entire ecosystems stripped of a single species, other species destroyed in the process.

  And yes it is a “samphire” and one variant even grows in alkali sloughs in the prairies!

  Makes a very nice pickle as well. Don’t tell anyone!

• [jere7my]

  Etymology fun facts: “samphire” is a corruption of
  “(herbe de) Saint Pierre” (Saint Peter’s herb), Saint Peter being the patron saint of fishermen. “Salicornia” means “salt-horn”, for obvious reasons. It’s also known as glasswort, because its ashes (soda ash, containing sodium carbonate) were used in glassmaking during the Middle Ages.

• [CCSurfer]

  Anthony Kiedis has about a million words that somehow rhyme with “California.”

• [Chevan]

  I worked at a wetlands research place for a month or so in high school giving tours to school groups. I’d always stop and point out this stuff and demonstrate its edibility. It’s pretty good stuff.

  Local lore is that people used it to add salt to their diet when they first colonized that area. Dunno if it’s true, but it sounds plausible.

• [Isalicus]

  That stuff appears to be what’s called “zeekraal” in Dutch. I knew the english name Glasswort but none of the others. As someone already pointed out, since a couple of years you can buy it in the supermarkets here in the Netherlands. I always try to find and eat some when I’m visiting the salty marshlands (kwelders) in the northern Netherlands, where it grows – although not as abundantly as you’d think. I wonder where the commercially available glasswort / sea beans come from. It’s great stuff. Juicy, delicate, salty.

• [Anonymous]

  I’ve eaten things you people wouldn’t believe. I’ve seen sea beans glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate …

  • [ackpht]

    Yeah, that’s where my brain went a quarter second after reading “sea beans”…

• [peterbruells]

  Queller, in Northern Germany. Quite delicious, but hard to get. I understand it’s readily available in Dutch supermartkets, though.

• [seyo]

  Salicornes are a delicacy in France. They eat them a lot in Brittany. There’s a fantastic dish made with a red wine and butter reduction sauce, sautéed sea beans and pan seared white flesh fish, that is absolutely to die for.

• [Heteromeles]

  Yummy stuff. Scary too.

  Here’s the good and bad.

  Good: taste. Also, they grow really well in moist saline soil, which should be good news for, say, farmers around Bakersfield whose fields are too salty to grow conventional crops. Also they grow fast, which is good.

  Bad: On the west coast, most salt marshes are a) small, b) home to endangered species. Yummy, yes, but please, please PLEASE wildcraft the weedy mustards, cardoon, fennel, etc., not the native pickleweed. It’s not endangered yet, but with all those uneaten weeds out there, why pick on a native that supports so much native life.

  Worse: pollution. Most of the salt marshes are downstream from urban areas, and urban areas dump their sewage and (worse) their storm drains straight into the waters that these plants grow in. Most marshes were also used as dumping grounds, sometimes for toxic waste. Considering what’s on the bottom of most harbors on the west coast (radioactivity from Bikini? San Francisco Bay. Interesting heavy metals? every port. etc, etc etc), I sure as hell wouldn’t eat much from any salt marsh there.

  Leave the Salicornia for the harvest mice and clapper rails. PLEASE.

  What to do? If you want to be a trendy samphire farmer, purchase some salt-wasted land with a source of reclaimed (e.g. saline) water, and grow it yourself. With a fair amount of work, you might even get an organic certification, and the land will certainly be cheap.

• [thekinginyellow]

  they has a really unique crunch

• [Baron Karza]

  Here’s my all-time favorite rhyme with “California”.
  From the Red Elvises song “Scorchie Chornie”:
  “Let’s take the Greyhound bus
  to California
  All that fancy food
  will make us hornier!!”

  Had to share.

  • [Anonymous]

    my new favorite band!

• [ora]

  I had this lots as a kid in Norfolk (UK, nor Virginia!).

  We always steamed/boiled it very lightly then served it with a little butter and vinegar on it. In restaurants you often see just the tips, but it is better as the full stem, and you drag the ‘flesh’ off the woodier cores with your teeth.

• [Gill]

  Known as Samphire (pronounced ‘samfer’) in Noroflk, UK. Delicious :)
  http://norfcoast.blogspot.com/2009/05/samphire.html

• [manicbassman]

  believe it is also known as Samphire in UK…

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/jun/30/features.weekend

• [boduelmike]

  Samphire in Cornwall, too.

  Currently in season; best eaten uncooked (wash thoroughly, pick out seabird feather fragments, guano, etc), no dressing required (perhaps a few drops of lime juice); delicious with lightly-seared scallops.

• [Nword]

  Here in italy, I had them as a pasta, with a white fish sauce.