Seablite (<i>Suaeda maritima</i>) Product for Cooking, Samut Songkram Province, Thailand

Abstract

Seablite ( Suaeda maritima ) is a salt marsh plant growing in mangrove forest. Local people in Samut Songkram, Thailand use seablite for different types of cooking such as traditional seablite salad, seablite curry with crabs, or scalded seablite with chili paste. The objectives of this research were: 1) to develop appropriate commercial seablite products of Samut Songkram province; 2) to evaluate the nutritional values of the seablite products; and 3) to investigate biological characteristics of seablite on health promotion. The result showed that: 1) for food processing, seablite must be harvested in rainy season. Before cooking process, seablite should be scalded in boiled water added with sugar. However, dried seablite is the most suitable product which can be used to make vegetable salad; 2) Based on the nutrition, the developed seablite products contained similar nutritional values to that of traditional fresh cooking except the developed products contained higher carbohydrate (4.85% vs. 4.59% w/w, respectively) with less water content (91.22% vs. 91.98% w/w) and lower amount of vitamin A (7982 vs. 9632 μg/100g) and vitamin E (2.80 vs. 3.51 mg/100g); 3) Seablite contains antioxidants especially the seablite extracted with water and no poisonous effect to normal cells. The results of this study can be used as preliminary data for further developing of seablite in commercial scale. In addition, seablite can be applied in cooking recipes as well as raw materials with high nutritional quality.