Fingerroot substitutes

Almost every Thai grocer carries fingerroot either frozen and pre-julienned in a bag, or shredded in brine in a jar. Both are the real ingredient, and the frozen version is what most Thai kitchens outside Thailand actually use.

Best for

jungle curry, gaeng pa, pad cha, fish curries, kanom jeen nam ya

Frozen krachai keeps its aroma and bitterness almost completely and is only slightly softer than fresh, so treat it as a direct swap. Brined krachai is softer still and carries a faint sourness from the packing liquid, so rinse it and expect a slightly less crisp bite. Frozen keeps around six months, which means buying it once solves this problem for a year of cooking.

Cut young ginger into fine matchsticks and add a smaller quantity of galangal sliced very thin. Ginger supplies the crisp julienne and warmth, galangal supplies the piney sharpness.

Best for

jungle curry, pad cha, fish and seafood curries, stir-fries

The best improvisation and the one to use. What you get right is the texture and the resinous top note; what you lose is the bitter medicinal edge, so a jungle curry made this way tastes brighter, cleaner and noticeably less wild. That bitterness is precisely what cuts through the muddiness of freshwater fish, so if the dish contains catfish or tilapia expect it to taste a little fishier than intended and add an extra squeeze of lime.

Fresh or frozen galangal cut as thin as you can manage, across the grain. Both rhizomes share the same piney, camphorous aroma family.

Best for

jungle curry, curry pastes, soups, fish curries

The closest match on smell, since galangal and fingerroot are relatives with overlapping aromatic compounds. The problem is the eating: galangal is dense and woody where krachai is crisp and tender, so thick slices are unchewable and people end up picking them out. Slice paper-thin and accept that the pieces are there for aroma rather than to be eaten. Flavour-wise it is sharper and less bitter than krachai.

Plain fresh ginger in fine matchsticks. The pantry answer that most people will actually use.

Best for

stir-fries, curries, soups, everyday cooking

Ginger is warm, pungent and slightly sweet, and it does the crisp-matchstick job well. What it entirely lacks is the bitter camphor note, so the dish reads as a ginger curry rather than a jungle curry. This is an acceptable everyday swap; just do not expect anyone who knows krachai to be fooled. Use young ginger if you can find it, since mature ginger is fibrous and hotter.

Fresh turmeric root, julienned. Same botanical family as fingerroot, and closer to it than ginger is in earthy bitterness.

Best for

southern Thai curries, fish curries, curry pastes

The bitter, earthy register is genuinely in the right place, which no other easily available root manages. Two catches: it stains everything an aggressive yellow, including your curry, your board and your fingers, and its bitterness is musty rather than piney. Use half the amount and make up the rest with ginger. Very good in a southern-style fish curry, more of a stretch in a clear jungle curry.

Sold in Asian herb shops and online. Simmer dried slices in the curry and remove before serving, or stir powder into the paste.

Best for

curry pastes, soups, braises

The aroma and the bitterness survive drying reasonably well, so this covers the flavour job. The crunch does not survive at all, and in dishes like pad cha where julienned krachai is a visible, eaten component the loss is obvious. Powder can also turn slightly dusty and bitter if overused, so start with less than you think and taste.