Bitter melon substitutes

These are two cultivars of the same plant, so if your recipe calls for one and the shop has the other, buy it. Chinese bitter melon is the long pale-green one with smooth ridges; karela and Caribbean corilla are shorter, darker and spikier.

Best for

ginisang ampalaya, karela fry, corilla with shrimp, bitter melon stir-fry with egg, bitter melon soup

The dark spiky karela and corilla types are noticeably more bitter than the pale Chinese type, so if you are swapping karela into a Chinese recipe, salt it for 20 minutes and rinse, or blanch it for one minute first. Going the other way, from Chinese melon into an Indian or Trinidadian recipe, the dish comes out milder than intended and you simply skip the salting step.

The closest thing in a Western supermarket to what bitter melon actually does. It is genuinely bitter, it stays crisp at the base when cooked hot and fast, and it does not turn to mush.

Best for

ampalaya with scrambled egg, bitter melon and black bean stir-fry, quick sautes

The bitterness is softer and rounder than bitter melon's, which is sharp and lingers at the back of the throat, and the layered leaves go silky where bitter melon stays crunchy. Cook it hotter and less than you would the gourd. A Filipino ginisang ampalaya made with endive tastes recognisably like the dish but gentler and slightly sweeter, and a splash of fish sauce puts the savoury edge back.

The peeled stems carry real bitterness and stay firm and juicy through a stir-fry, which is the two things bitter melon is there for.

Best for

bitter melon with fermented black beans, bitter melon and beef stir-fry, curries, dals

Broccoli rabe's bitterness is greener and more mustardy, and it comes with a cabbage note bitter melon does not have, so a stir-fry made with it reads as a greens dish rather than a gourd dish. Discard most of the leaves, which wilt away to nothing, and keep the stems. Chinese broccoli is the milder of the two and the better choice in a soup.

Neither is bitter at all, but both give you the ridged tube shape, the pale flesh and the watery crunch, which is what you need when the recipe stuffs, rings or halves the gourd.

Best for

bharwa karela (stuffed bitter melon), stuffed bitter melon soup, corilla curry, dishes where the shape matters

This is a texture-only substitution and the dish will taste sweet and mild where it should taste bracing. Put the bitterness back with a quarter teaspoon of crushed fenugreek seed per portion, a small handful of chopped endive or radicchio in the filling, or a scant pinch of ground fenugreek in the masala. Cucumber holds its crunch better than zucchini, which collapses if you overcook it by even a couple of minutes.

Sharp, peppery and faintly bitter, and cheap and available almost everywhere. A reasonable stand-in in anything wet and spiced.

Best for

bitter melon dal, curries, braises, stews

The bite here is mustardy heat rather than true bitterness, so the finished dish tastes hot and green instead of bitter and cooling, and the greens wilt to a soft tangle with no crunch left. Best in a dal or a wet curry where texture was never the point. Add them in the last five minutes so they keep some character.

The honest option. Bitter melon is one of a small number of ingredients with no real understudy, and a dish that quietly leaves it out is usually better than the same dish with a bad guess in it.

Best for

stir-fries with several other vegetables, soups, mixed curries

What you lose is the bitter counterweight, so everything else tastes flatter and sweeter than the recipe intends, and rich or fatty dishes in particular start to feel heavy. Acid does not replace bitterness but it does cut fat in a similar way, which is why a squeeze of lime and a touch more salt gets you a dish that is at least balanced. Do not do this for a dish named after the gourd, such as ampalaya con carne or karela fry, because at that point there is no recipe left.