Our Seaweed Chutneys main Ingredient is of course seaweed, that is hand harvested from the pristine coastal waters of the Isle of Mull. The Isle of Mull has a coast line of around 300 miles where seaweed grows in abundance.
We started producing our chutney in May 2019, where we have to date, two different varieties, one being sweet and one being spicy. At first we simply made the chutney for ourselves at home as a healthy snack, but with encouragement from family and friends, went forward with it as a product for sale.
We found that it compliments many dishes and snacks, from an alternative to tomato base on a pizza, to an ingredient in a marinade for both fish and meat, as well as your typical uses for chutney, cheese and biscuits. It is really very versatile.
The type of seaweed we use is Kelp. We mainly use the ‘Laminaria Digitata’ species also know as tangle kelp. This can be found at a very low tide right around Mull.
This type of Seaweed is amongst the highest in nutritional content. Seaweeds, especially the brown varieties, boast the highest nutritional content of all living things and trump any land based plant in terms of nutrition, having far more Iodine, Calcium, Iron and Magnesium to name a few whilst containing multiple Vitamins.
We take great care when gathering the seaweed, to just take cuts from the plants so that the seaweed has time to regrow and we are not depleting the wild stocks. We vary where we harvest, so as not to have an effect on the wild stocks, which are home to lots of different sea creatures. Some species of kelp can grow at a rate of 5m per day in the correct conditions.
