To make dried kelp in Minecraft, you smelt raw kelp in a furnace, smoker, or campfire using any fuel source. The process takes just a few seconds and turns a common ocean plant into a compact, versatile item you can eat or turn into fuel blocks.
What you need to make dried kelp in Minecraft
Before you start cooking, gather three things: raw kelp, a fuel source, and a furnace, smoker, or campfire. Raw kelp is the only ingredient you’ll cook. For fuel, anything that burns works, coal, charcoal, wood planks, or even a dried kelp block if you already have one. A furnace is the most common option, but a smoker cooks food faster and a campfire works just as well for small batches.
How to find and harvest kelp in ocean biomes
Kelp grows naturally in most ocean biomes, but not all of them. You’ll find it in every ocean except frozen, deep frozen, warm, and deep warm oceans. Look for tall, green, stalk-like plants rising from the ocean floor, often growing around seagrass. In cold or temperate oceans, these underwater columns are easy to spot while swimming or boating.
Harvesting kelp is simple: break any part of the stalk. When you break one piece, every piece above it breaks too and floats to the surface, so you can collect an entire stalk in seconds. You don’t need any special tool, your hand works fine, though a tool with the Silk Touch enchantment lets you collect the plant without breaking it, which can be useful if you want to replant it. Swim down to the base of the stalk, break it, and grab the pieces as they float up.
Smelting raw kelp into dried kelp
Once you have a stack of raw kelp, open your furnace, smoker, or campfire. Place the raw kelp in the top slot and your fuel in the bottom slot. The fuel will start burning immediately, and within a few seconds, the raw kelp will transform into dried kelp. A single piece of coal smelts about eight kelp, so you’ll need multiple fuel sources for a large harvest. The smoker works faster than a furnace, but the result is identical.
How to use dried kelp for food and fuel
Dried kelp is a handy food source in a pinch. Eating one piece restores 1 hunger point, which isn’t much, but it’s easy to carry stacks of it on long trips. More importantly, dried kelp shines as fuel. You can craft nine pieces into a dried kelp block, and that block burns for 200 seconds, enough to smelt 20 items in a furnace. That makes it one of the most efficient renewable fuels in the game, especially since kelp grows back quickly.
Crafting and storing dried kelp blocks
To craft a dried kelp block, fill all nine slots of a crafting grid with dried kelp. This gives you one compact block that takes up far less inventory space than nine individual pieces. The block can be used directly as fuel, or you can craft it back into nine dried kelp whenever you need the food. This makes dried kelp blocks ideal for storage, stockpile a few chests of them and you’ll always have a reliable fuel supply or emergency food source ready.
