Adjika substitutes

The closest wet chilli paste you can buy in an ordinary shop: thick, salty, chilli-driven, no sugar. It is cumin and caraway forward and often smokier, so the dish tastes distinctly North African rather than Georgian, and the extra raw garlic is what pulls it back towards adjika.

Best for

stirring into stews and bean dishes, rubbing on chicken or lamb, serving alongside grilled meat, marinades

Best all-round swap for wet adjika. Rose harissa is sweeter and more floral, so use plain harissa if you have a choice. Grate the garlic in raw and off the heat.

Sambal oelek is essentially crushed red chilli with salt and vinegar, no sugar and no spice blend, which makes it the cleanest starting point of any bottled paste. Adding raw garlic and coriander lands you convincingly close, with a slightly sharper vinegar edge than adjika has.

Best for

stews and braises, serving as a table condiment, chicken and pork, bean and vegetable dishes

The closest in flavour direction if you already have sambal in the fridge. If the vinegar note is too obvious, a pinch of sugar knocks it back without making the paste sweet.

Warm the flakes gently in the oil for thirty seconds, take the pan off the heat, then stir in the raw garlic and salt. Rough-textured and simple, but honest, and it hits the same three notes adjika lives on: heat, salt and garlic.

Best for

quick fixes, stirring into soups and stews, dressing potatoes and vegetables, rubs

The best option when you have nothing bottled at all. Add a quarter teaspoon of ground coriander and it improves noticeably. Do not let the garlic fry, or it goes sweet and loses its bite.

Combine 2 teaspoons ground hot red pepper, 1 teaspoon ground coriander seed, half a teaspoon ground fenugreek, half a teaspoon dried dill or dried marigold and 1 teaspoon fine salt. This is the answer when the recipe rubs adjika onto meat or stirs it into a dry spice mix rather than spooning it from a jar.

Best for

dry rubs for chicken and lamb, seasoning roast vegetables, sprinkling over grilled meat, seasoning stews at the start

Blue fenugreek, utskho suneli, is the smell people recognise as Georgian and is very hard to buy. Ground fenugreek seed is the nearest thing but more bitter, so use half as much as a recipe would use of blue fenugreek. A jar of khmeli suneli, if you find one, is closer still.

Right heat level and real depth, but gochujang is sweet and fermented-soy savoury, so a Georgian stew made with it tastes rounder, darker and less sharp than it should. A squeeze of lemon and an extra grated garlic clove cut through the sweetness and get it much closer.

Best for

braises and stews, marinades, meat glazes

Use half the volume because it is thicker and more concentrated. It also browns faster than adjika under a grill because of the sugar, so watch anything you brush it onto.

The honest least-bad option. Expect a thinner, sweeter, distinctly vinegary result: it supplies heat and garlic, and nothing about it tastes Georgian. In a stew the sugar and vinegar are noticeable, and the paste will not sit on meat the way a thick adjika does.

Best for

emergencies, table condiment, dips and dressings

If you only have sriracha, stir in a spoonful of tomato paste to thicken it and a good grating of raw garlic, and accept that the dish will taste of sriracha.