Fregola substitutes

Also sold as Israeli couscous or ptitim. The same size and rough shape as fregola, made from the same semolina, but rolled smooth and pale rather than toasted, so it tastes of very little on its own.

Best for

seafood stews, clam and tomato broth, grain salads, brothy vegetable dishes

Straight from the box it is the wrong flavour: soft, sweetish, and blank where fregola is nutty and savoury. The fix takes five minutes. Toast it dry in a wide pan over medium heat, stirring, until it smells like popcorn and goes from cream to light gold. Then cook as the recipe says. Untoasted it also cooks softer and stays rounder and more slippery, so a stew that should hold its shape can go a little gluey. Toasting firms it up as well as flavouring it.

Small irregular toasted pasta pellets from Hungary, traditionally browned in fat before cooking. The closest thing to fregola made anywhere outside Sardinia.

Best for

brothy stews, tomato and seafood dishes, side dishes cooked like a pilaf

The irregular pellets and the roasted, biscuity flavour line up with fregola almost exactly, which is the single reason to look for it. The difference is egg: tarhonya usually contains it, so the flavour is a shade richer and rounder and the colour more yellow. If the dish is a delicate seafood broth, that extra richness is noticeable but not unwelcome. Cook time runs shorter, around 8 to 10 minutes.

Tiny round pasta beads, roughly a third the size of fregola. Widely available and cheap.

Best for

brothy soups, dishes where fregola is a thickener, feeding children

The beads are too small to give the chewy individual bite that makes fregola satisfying, so the dish reads as a thick soup rather than a stew with texture in it. Because there is more surface area, they release more starch and thicken the broth faster, which can be an advantage in a clam or tomato broth and a problem in a salad, where they clump. No toasted flavour at all, so brown them in a spoonful of olive oil before adding liquid. Reduce the cook time to around 8 minutes.

Rice-shaped semolina pasta. The most reliably stocked stand-in and a genuinely good one for anything brothy.

Best for

seafood and tomato broth, warm grain salads, brothy vegetable dishes

Orzo is denser and grainier than fregola and shaped like a grain of rice rather than a pebble, so instead of distinct chewy balls you get something closer to a risotto. It sheds a lot of starch, so a broth that should stay loose will tighten noticeably; add a splash more liquid than the recipe says. Toast it dry or in oil first, which orzo takes to very well and which recovers most of the nuttiness fregola brings.

The improvised option: break dried pasta into short pieces or use small shapes such as ditalini, then toast them on a sheet pan at 375F for 8 to 10 minutes until patchy brown.

Best for

when nothing pearl-shaped is available, rustic stews, when you specifically want the toasted flavour

This is the one substitution that gets the flavour right and the shape wrong, which for most fregola recipes is the better trade. The pieces are angular rather than round, so the mouthfeel is more like a broken-pasta soup than a bowl of pearls. Watch the pan closely; toasted pasta goes from golden to bitter inside a minute, and burnt semolina will ruin a whole pot of broth.

The least-good option here, listed because so many people have it in the cupboard and assume couscous is couscous. It is not.

Best for

absolute last resort, salads where fregola was a minor component

Fine couscous is tiny steamed granules that swell to a fluffy mass in a couple of minutes. Dropped into a brothy Sardinian stew it will drink the liquid, dissolve into the sauce, and leave you with something like a wet grain porridge with no chew whatsoever. If it is genuinely all you have, cook it separately according to its packet, then spoon the stew over it as you would over rice. Do not cook it in the broth.