Belacan substitutes

The same idea from the other side of the strait, and the nearest thing to a true replacement.

Best for

sambal belacan, nasi lemak sambal, kangkung belacan and stir-fried greens, curry and laksa pastes

Terasi is also a dried block of fermented shrimp, so it toasts, crumbles and behaves almost identically. It is usually a shade darker, a little softer to cut, and slightly less aggressively salty, which means a sambal made with terasi tastes a touch rounder and marginally less sharp. If you want to close the gap, add a pinch of salt. Toast it exactly as you would belacan, and treat the quantity in the recipe as unchanged.

Very common and easy to buy, but wetter and milder, so the handling changes.

Best for

curry pastes, sambal for cooked dishes, stir-fried greens, nam prik style dips

Kapi comes as a soft dark paste with a lot more moisture in it, so measure generously and expect it to loosen your sambal. Crucially, do not try to dry-toast it: it will scorch and stick. Instead fry it in a teaspoon of oil for a minute or two until it stops smelling raw. The flavour is saltier and sweeter in a slightly cleaner way, with much less of the toasted, almost roasted-nut depth belacan gets from being cooked over dry heat. It reads Thai rather than Malaysian in a finished dish.

The most likely thing in your cupboard, and it covers salt and umami and nothing else.

Best for

cooked sambals, stir-fries, curry and noodle sauces, soups

Fish sauce and belacan come from the same fermentation family, so the savoury direction is right, but fish sauce is a thin liquid and belacan is a dense concentrate. The finished sambal will be looser, brighter and noticeably thinner-tasting, without the heavy, sticky, almost bitter depth belacan brings. It also adds a lot of salt, so cut back the salt elsewhere in the recipe. Half a teaspoon of brown or palm sugar alongside it helps mimic belacan's rounded, slightly fermented sweetness.

Closer in texture and body than fish sauce, but nowhere near as funky.

Best for

sambal, kangkung belacan and stir-fried vegetables, chili pastes, rojak dressings

Toast the dried shrimp in a dry pan for two or three minutes until fragrant, then pound or blitz them to a coarse powder. They give you real shrimp flavour and enough body to thicken a paste, which fish sauce cannot do. What is absent is the fermentation: dried shrimp taste sweet and cleanly of the sea, whereas belacan tastes pungent, deep and slightly cheesy. Adding a teaspoon of fish sauce alongside them narrows the gap noticeably. Expect a slightly gritty texture unless you grind them very fine.

A Mediterranean stand-in that delivers salty savouriness in a different accent.

Best for

cooked sambals, curry pastes, stir-fried greens, braises

It works because it is also salted, cured seafood and it also dissolves into a sauce and disappears while leaving depth behind. It is oilier, straightforwardly fishy rather than fermented, and less pungent, so the dish will taste savoury but not distinctly Southeast Asian. Add a quarter teaspoon of sugar to round it out. This is fine in a cooked sambal or a curry base and clearly wrong in a raw sambal belacan pounded with fresh chili and lime, where the belacan flavour is the whole point.

The shellfish-free option, and honest about being a different flavour rather than a copy.

Best for

vegetarian and vegan sambal, shellfish allergies, curry pastes, stir-fried greens

Darker miso brings fermented saltiness and a similar thick, concentrated texture, the soy adds a savoury edge, and a pinch of ground kombu or nori supplies the marine note miso completely lacks. Together they produce a sambal that is rounder, beanier and less pungent, and unmistakably not made with shrimp. It is a good sauce in its own right. Fry the miso mixture in a little oil first, as you would the paste, so it loses its raw taste.