Provided are methods of making high quality seaweed meal suitable for food applications. The method comprises the steps of cleaning the fresh, dried, or rehydrated red seaweed, pretreating the red seaweed with a salt under heat, and drying and grinding the treated red seaweed to obtain the seaweed meal. Optionally, the method comprises bleaching the red seaweed, and/or hydrolyzing the red seaweed with cellulase. The seaweed meal produced by the disclosed technology has a light color, good flavor and taste, good mouthfeel, high gelling capability, great stability, and ideal smoothness and slipperiness suitable for food applications.
