Basil seeds substitutes

The closest widely available option and the swap almost everyone reaches for. Both form a gel coat and both are flavourless. The differences are real though: chia needs twenty to thirty minutes to hydrate against basil's two, its gel is thicker and cloudier so a clear lemonade turns hazy, and the seed keeps a slight crunch where a basil seed goes fully soft. Slightly nutty if you taste them plain.

Best for

sweet drinks and lemonades, che and dessert soups, falooda, anywhere you already have chia in the cupboard

Soak them separately in plain water first, then strain and add, rather than stirring dry chia straight into a finished drink where it clumps into gluey lumps at the bottom.

Different scale, same idea. Cooked small tapioca pearls sit suspended in a sweet drink as translucent chewy dots and they look attractive, closer to what a Vietnamese che is going for visually. They are much bigger, much chewier and have no slippery coating, so you get a distinct bouncy bite instead of the delicate slip of a basil seed.

Best for

che and dessert soups, sweet coconut drinks, falooda, when you want something more substantial

Use the small pearls, not boba-size ones, and rinse them in cold water after cooking so they do not glue together or cloud the drink with loose starch.

The best-looking substitute. A thin sheet of set agar jelly diced small gives clear, glassy, slippery pieces that sit through a drink beautifully and keep it looking crystalline, which chia cannot do. The texture is firmer and snappier than a basil seed's soft slip, and the cubes sink faster, so stir before serving.

Best for

clear sweet drinks, che thai and mixed fruit desserts, falooda, presentation

Set it firm and thin, about a quarter inch, so it dices cleanly. Agar sets at room temperature and holds in a warm drink, unlike gelatin, which melts.

Both are standard che ingredients already, so nothing looks out of place. Grass jelly adds a dark colour and a faint bittersweet herbal taste that basil seeds do not have, which changes the drink noticeably. Nata de coco is clear, slightly sweet and pleasantly rubbery. Neither floats the way basil seeds do, so the visual effect is different.

Best for

che thai and mixed che, sweet coconut drinks, using ingredients already in an Asian pantry

Both come canned in syrup, so drain and rinse them and cut back the sugar elsewhere in the recipe by a spoonful.

This makes a slippery gel and that is all it shares. Flax gel is thick, brownish and slightly slimy with a distinct nutty-grassy taste, and it does not stay in discrete suspended specks, it just makes the whole liquid viscous. Use it only if you want a thicker drink and have nothing else. It will not look right.

Best for

thickening a drink slightly, absolute last resort

Whole flaxseed does not gel usefully in cold liquid at all, so it has to be ground. Expect the colour of the drink to change.

A reasonable choice, and worth saying plainly since basil seeds contribute no flavour whatsoever. A soda chanh or a glass of che without them tastes exactly the same. What you lose is purely the visual interest and the little slippery pops, which for many people is most of the fun of the drink but is not the flavour of it.

Best for

sweet drinks and lemonades, when nothing else is on hand

If the drink was going to rely on the seeds for interest, add something else with texture instead, such as diced fruit, tapioca pearls or crushed ice.