Block of the Month: Dried Kelp

Dried kelp was added to Minecraft in the Update Aquatic, released in the middle of 2018. The update focused on Minecraft’s oceans, adding corals, sea pickles, dolphins, and – yes – kelp.

You’ll find kelp in most oceans, close to patches of seagrass. Breaking one part of a stalk will break all the parts above it, so the smart thing to do is dive to the very bottom and knock out the bottom block. When you’ve harvested a couple of stacks of the stuff, stick it in a furnace, smoker, or campfire to dry it out and turn it into dried kelp.

Eating dried kelp will restore half a chunk of hunger, and add a tiny bit of hunger saturation – allowing you to go longer without needing to eat again. It’s great for snacking – topping up just a little bit of your hunger meter so you can heal, without needing to waste an entire pumpkin pie. You can also compost it, if you decide you don’t like the taste.

But far better than that is to turn it into blocks! These blocks are crafted out of nine dried kelp items in a crafting grid, and you can do two things with them. First, you can build a weird house made of dried kelp. Not sure why you’d want to do that. Second, you can use them as fuel in furnaces, blast furnaces and smokers. They burn for 200 seconds, and can smelt 20 items in that time - much longer than coal or charcoal.

In the real world, kelp is found in dense forests below the surface of many of the world’s oceans. Fun fact – it’s not actually a plant – it’s a “heterokont”, which is a group of organisms totally unrelated to plants. Algae are also in this group.

It’s pretty easy to harvest kelp, and so it has become part of the cuisines of many cultures in the world. It’s best known to people in East Asia as “kombu” and is used for flavoring broths and stews, and as a garnish for other dishes. It’s also popular in Russia and Iceland.

But you might be surprised to learn that you consume some kelp almost every day – as long as you practice good dental hygiene. A thickener called “alginate” is made of kelp, and is used in all kinds of products – including ice cream, salad dressing, skincare products, and – yes – toothpaste.

There’s no toothpaste in Minecraft, at least not yet (who knows what those developers are cooking up). So you’ll have to settle with eating your Minecraft kelp in its dried form instead. Now, let’s race to see who can chew through an entire stack the fastest – GO!