Breadfruit substitutes

Peeled, cored breadfruit sold in frozen chunks or canned in brine in Caribbean, West African, Filipino and Pacific Island grocers.

Best for

roast breadfruit, breadfruit salad, oil down, boiled breadfruit, breadfruit fries, curries and stews

The same ingredient with the hardest part done, since peeling and coring a fresh breadfruit is genuinely messy work. Frozen chunks go into boiling water straight from the freezer and take about the same time as fresh. Canned breadfruit is already cooked and only needs warming, but it is softer and picks up a faint brine taste, so rinse it and hold back the salt. Neither will roast to the smoky, blistered finish of a whole fresh breadfruit cooked over a fire, which is the one thing you cannot buy in a bag.

Ordinary supermarket potato, the most available stand-in anywhere and a fair one because breadfruit's job in a dish is starch and body.

Best for

boiled breadfruit, breadfruit fries and chips, roasted chunks, stews and oil down, breadfruit salad, curry

Very close in role, noticeably different in texture and slightly different in flavour. Breadfruit is denser and firmer than potato with a faint sweetness and, as the name suggests, a bready, chestnut-like quality; potato is fluffier, wetter inside and cleaner tasting. In practice: russet for fries and roasting because it crisps and goes fluffy, Yukon Gold for boiling and stews because it holds its shape as breadfruit does. Cut potato into larger pieces than the recipe says and add it to a stew later, since it will collapse in the time breadfruit needs. For breadfruit salad, boiled Yukon Gold plus a squeeze of lime is a genuinely good version of the dish.

Unripe jackfruit packed in brine or water, sold in cans in Asian and Caribbean grocers and now in most large supermarkets.

Best for

plant-based curries, stews and rundown, tacos and fillings, oil down

The best texture match for the slightly fibrous, meaty quality that mature-but-firm breadfruit has, which is why both fruits turn up in the same plant-based recipes. It is much less starchy though, so it will not thicken a stew or fill a plate the way breadfruit does, and canned jackfruit carries a distinct sour-briny note that needs rinsing and about twenty minutes of cooking to shed. Use it where you want breadfruit's shreddable texture and add a potato as well if you also need the starch. Do not buy jackfruit in syrup, which is the ripe sweet fruit and completely wrong here.

Fully green, hard plantain treated as a starch vegetable, peeled with a knife rather than by hand.

Best for

boiled starchy sides, oil down and stews, fried chunks and chips, soups

A very natural swap because plantain sits on the same Caribbean plate as breadfruit and holds its shape beautifully through a long simmer. It is firmer, more fibrous and a bit drier than breadfruit, with a green banana note behind the starch that you will notice on a plain boiled plate and not at all in a coconut oil down. Excellent for fried chunks, where it gives a crisp shell and firm interior, though breadfruit fries are creamier in the middle. Rub your knife and hands with oil, since green plantain sap stains.

Starchy tropical corms with hairy brown skin and white or pink-flecked flesh, sold as taro, dasheen, eddoe, malanga or yautia.

Best for

stews and sancocho, boiled sides, soups, oil down

The closest match on density and the best choice in a long-cooked one-pot, because like breadfruit these roots stay in recognisable pieces instead of dissolving. They taste nuttier and earthier than breadfruit and are slightly slippery on the tongue, and they thicken the cooking liquid more, so a stew will come out noticeably heavier. Both must be fully cooked, and raw taro and malanga can irritate bare skin, so peel them under running water or wear gloves.

Calabaza, kabocha or butternut squash, which appear alongside breadfruit in Caribbean one-pots.

Best for

oil down, soups and stews, curries where sweetness is welcome

This is the least-good option and worth being straight about. Squash is sweeter, softer and much wetter than breadfruit, it breaks down into the sauce rather than holding its shape, and it turns the pot orange. In a coconut oil down or a soup that already has pumpkin in it, that is fine and even pleasant. In roast breadfruit, breadfruit fries or breadfruit salad, where the whole point is a dense, firm, faintly bready bite, squash is simply the wrong food and a potato is a far better answer. Add it in the last fifteen minutes and cut any other sweet element in the dish.