Biquinho pepper substitutes

South African pickled sweet piquante peppers sold in the same kind of brine jar.

Best for

charcuterie and cheese boards, salads, pizza topping, stuffing with cream cheese

The best all-round answer. Peppadews are sweeter and more syrupy than biquinho and carry a faint prickle of heat where biquinho has essentially none, so a board made with them reads a little candied. They are also two or three times bigger, so cut them down or the pepper stops being a one-bite garnish. Rinse briefly if the sweetness is too forward.

Round pickled peppers from the Italian-American deli aisle, sold sweet or hot.

Best for

antipasto plates, sandwiches, salads, grain bowls

Crunchier and much more vinegar-forward than biquinho, with less of the fruity sweetness, so the dish tips toward sharp instead of sweet-tart. Add a pinch of sugar to the plate or a drizzle of honey to rebalance. Buy the sweet ones deliberately: the hot version is a different ingredient and will surprise people expecting a mild pepper.

Spanish roasted red peppers, sweet and completely mild, sold in jars.

Best for

cheese boards, tapas, stuffing, blending into dips and spreads

The sweetness and the total absence of heat are spot on. What you lose is crunch and acidity: piquillos are soft and roasted where biquinho is snappy and pickled, so they read as a silky red pepper rather than a bright little pop. Toss the strips with a teaspoon of white wine vinegar to fake the brine, and accept that the texture is genuinely different.

Pale green pickled Italian peppers, tangy with a very mild warmth.

Best for

sandwiches, salads, pizza, anywhere the pepper is a background accent

Widely available and the right level of gentle. But they are green-tasting and distinctly sour rather than sweet, and they lose you the little red teardrop look entirely, so use them where the pepper is mixed in rather than sitting on top of a board. Draining them well and adding a small pinch of sugar helps.

Small tomatoes steeped in a sweet-sour brine to mimic the pop and the color.

Best for

cheese boards, salads, garnish where appearance matters

A real workaround rather than a pepper. Simmer half a cup of white wine vinegar with two tablespoons of sugar and a half teaspoon of salt, pour it hot over the halved tomatoes and leave 30 minutes. You get the same sweet-tart burst and the same red bead on the plate. It tastes tomatoey rather than fruity-pepper, and it goes soft after a day, so make it the same day you serve it.

Small pickled cucumbers with a firm snap.

Best for

charcuterie boards, pate and rillettes, potato and egg salads

This is the least-bad choice when you have no peppers at all. It matches the crunch and the palate-cleansing acid that biquinho contributes next to fatty cured meat, which is really the job it is doing on a board. It is not sweet and not fruity, so the plate tastes sharper and greener. Nobody will mistake it for biquinho, but the board still works.