Skip to content

Dried Sour Plums (Aloo Bukhara) substitute

Best substitute

Prunes plus lemon juice or verjuice

Use the same amount by count, plus 1-2 tsp lemon juice or 1 tbsp verjuice per 6 plums as the dried sour plums (aloo bukhara) you are replacing

Best for khoresh aloo

Different taste

The most available option and a genuinely good one. Prunes match the size, the leathery chew and the way the fruit slowly softens and thickens a braise.

Other dried sour plums (aloo bukhara) substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

Substitutes for Dried Sour Plums (Aloo Bukhara) with ratios

  1. 2Dried apricots plus lemon juice

    Different taste

    Use the same amount by count, plus 1-2 tsp lemon juice per 6 plums

    The best visual and textural match, especially the pale Turkish ones, which are almost exactly the size, colour and chew of yellow aloo bukhara.

    What changes
    Best for
    khoresh aloo, chicken and lamb braises, keeping the pale amber colour, rice dishes, Moroccan-style tagines

    Sweeter and more honeyed, with a distinct apricot perfume that sour plums do not have, so the dish smells more floral than fruity-sour. Turkish apricots are milder and sweeter than Californian ones, which retain more tartness and are the better pick here if you can find them. As with prunes, the added acid is not optional.

  2. 3Dried sour cherries or barberries (zereshk)

    Different texture

    about half the weight of the sour plums

    The only easy substitute that is genuinely sour in its own right, so you do not need to correct it with lemon juice.

    What changes
    Best for
    when you want real tartness without added acid, rice dishes, chicken braises, sauces where the fruit is meant to dissolve

    The sourness register is right, which counts for more than looks. The problem is size: both are much smaller than a plum, so they break down and disappear into the sauce instead of staying as whole soft fruit you can eat with a fork, and both stain the dish red-brown rather than amber. Barberries in particular are very sour, so start at half weight and taste. Add them in the last ten minutes.

  3. 4Umeboshi or Chinese salted plums

    Different texture

    Use 1-2 plums for every 6 sour plums, and reduce the salt in the dish

    An unexpected but effective option, because these actually are sour plums, just preserved with salt instead of dried sweet.

    What changes
    Best for
    getting real plum sourness, braises where you control the salt, when nothing else is available, adding depth to a flat stew

    Extremely sour and extremely salty, so treat them as a seasoning rather than a fruit. Use one or two, mash them into the braising liquid, and cut the salt elsewhere in the recipe by at least half. You get the puckering plum note but none of the soft whole fruit, and umeboshi carries a faint shiso and pickle aroma that reads as Japanese rather than Persian.

  4. 5Fresh sour plums or tart red plums

    Taste and texture differ

    Use 3 fresh plums for every 1 dried, added in the last 20 minutes

    Good in summer when tart plums are cheap.

    What changes

    Greengages, damsons and underripe red plums all work, and Persian cooks use fresh sour plums (gojeh sabz) in season anyway.

    Best for
    summer cooking, when good tart plums are in season, lighter, fresher braises, sauces

    Fresh fruit is far less concentrated, holds a lot of water and collapses quickly, so the stew ends up looser and the fruit turns to pulp rather than staying as recognisable pieces. Add them late, cut back the other liquid, and expect a brighter, jammier result. Ripe supermarket plums are too sweet; you want ones that make you wince.

  5. 6Tamarind paste

    Taste and texture differ

    Use 1 tsp for every 3 sour plums

    The least-bad option when you have no dried fruit at all.

    What changes

    It supplies the sourness and some of the sticky body the plums would have given.

    Best for
    emergencies, heavier lamb and beef braises, southern Iranian and Indian dishes, correcting a stew that tastes flat

    The sourness is right but the flavour is not: tamarind is darker, deeper and distinctly date-like, so the dish stops tasting of plum entirely and takes on a brown, molasses-edged character. You also lose the pieces of soft fruit, which in khoresh aloo are half of what people are eating. Fine in a robust braise, wrong in a delicate chicken dish.

What is Dried Sour Plums (Aloo Bukhara)?

Dried Sour Plums (Aloo Bukhara) is Dried sour plums, called aloo bukhara or alu bukhara, are small sun-dried yellow to amber plums that are leathery and mouth-puckeringly tart rather than sweet like a prune.

Cooking tips

  • Aloo bukhara are usually sold with the stones still in. Count them into the pot and count them out again, or at least warn people at the table, because a stone in a mouthful of stew is a broken tooth waiting to happen.
  • If the plums are rock hard, soak them in hot water for twenty minutes and tip the soaking liquid into the pot as well. That water holds a lot of the sourness you paid for, so throwing it away is a waste.
  • Add them in the last thirty to forty minutes of a braise. Any longer and they disintegrate into the sauce; any less and they stay tough and their sourness never spreads through the dish.
  • Taste before adding any sugar. Recipes for khoresh aloo often call for a little sugar to balance the fruit, but the tartness of dried sour plums varies enormously between batches and brands, and a sweet batch plus sugar gives you a cloying stew.
  • Do not confuse dried sour plums with aloobukhara lavashak, the sour plum fruit leather sold in flat sheets as a snack. The leather is pureed and often sweetened and salted, so it dissolves completely rather than staying as fruit. It makes a decent souring agent but it will not give you pieces of plum.

Frequently asked questions

Are aloo bukhara the same as prunes?

No, and this is the confusion the ingredient causes most often. Prunes are dried sweet European plums, dark purple-black and sugary. Aloo bukhara are dried sour plums, usually pale yellow to amber, and they are sharply tart. They are used in savoury cooking specifically for acidity. You can substitute prunes, but you must add lemon juice or verjuice alongside them.

How many prunes replace how many dried sour plums?

Swap them one for one by count, then add one to two teaspoons of lemon juice or a tablespoon of verjuice for every six prunes to make up the missing sourness. Taste towards the end of cooking and add more acid if the dish still reads as sweet. Prunes vary a great deal in sugar content, so this is a taste-and-adjust substitution rather than a fixed formula.

Can I use plum jam or plum sauce instead?

Not really. Both are heavily sweetened and, in the case of plum sauce, spiced and vinegared for a completely different cuisine, so they will push a Persian stew towards sweet-and-sour Chinese territory. If it is genuinely all you have, use a tablespoon of plum jam plus a tablespoon of lemon juice per six plums and accept that the dish will be sweeter and smoother than intended.

Can I just leave them out?

In khoresh aloo, where the plums are named in the dish, leaving them out removes both the sourness and the fruit, and the stew tastes heavy and flat. Add some other acid at minimum, even just lemon juice. In a rice dish or a stuffing where the plums are one of several dried fruits, you can omit them and add extra raisins, barberries or apricots instead without much loss.

Do dried sour plums have pits?

Usually yes. Most aloo bukhara sold at Middle Eastern and South Asian grocers are dried whole with the stone in, which is part of why they hold their shape so well in a long braise. Some brands sell pitted versions. Either way, check the bag, and if the stones are in, keep track of how many plums went into the pot.

Related substitutes

More fruits substitutes

Need a different ingredient?

Browse the full index, or the rest of this category.

Browse all substitutesMore fruits