Kimchi substitutes

The closest you can get from ordinary shops, and surprisingly convincing once cooked.

Best for

kimchi fried rice, kimchi jjigae and stews, kimchi pancakes and jeon, kimchi grilled cheese and sandwiches, braises with pork

Both are lacto-fermented cabbage, so the fundamental sour-funky base is right, which is why this works far better than any chilli sauce alone. Squeeze the sauerkraut hard first, because it carries a lot of brine and will water down a fried rice. Sauerkraut is made from green cabbage rather than napa, so it stays firmer and stringier and never goes as tender, and its sourness is cleaner and more vinegary without the marine depth that salted shrimp gives kimchi. A teaspoon of fish sauce per cup closes most of that gap.

Easier to shop for than gochugaru, and fine once you know it lands sweeter.

Best for

fried rice, stews and soups, noodles, marinades and glazes

Gochujang brings chilli, colour and fermented soybean savouriness in one spoon, which is convenient, but it also brings sugar and glutinous rice, so a stew made this way tastes rounder, sweeter and slightly thicker than one made with kimchi, and less pungent. Add a grated garlic clove to restore the sharpness that kimchi has and gochujang does not. Because gochujang can catch and caramelise in a hot pan, stir it into liquid rather than dropping it onto dry heat.

Thirty minutes for something you can serve as a side dish, which is where other swaps fail.

Best for

a side dish or banchan, topping rice bowls, tacos and burgers, cold noodles and salads, anywhere the kimchi is served raw rather than cooked

Salting and squeezing the cabbage is what gives it the dense, snappy, seasoned texture rather than a watery slaw, so do not skip it. This is unfermented, so the sourness comes from vinegar and tastes bright and simple where real kimchi tastes complex, layered and slightly fizzy. It is genuinely good on its own terms and clearly not kimchi. It is also the right answer when you need something to sit on a plate rather than melt into a pan.

A very good and often overlooked option if there is an Asian grocer nearby.

Best for

stews and braises, fried rice, noodle soups, pork dishes

Chinese suan cai and pickled mustard greens are properly fermented, so they carry real sour funk and a savoury depth that vinegar pickles cannot fake, and they hold their texture in a long simmer even better than kimchi does. The flavour is more mustardy and slightly bitter, less garlicky, and not remotely spicy, so the gochugaru is doing real work. Rinse them if they taste aggressively salty, then drain well. In a pork and cabbage stew this is arguably a lateral move rather than a downgrade.

The route to take if you happen to have the seasoning but not the finished jar.

Best for

same-day kimchi for eating fresh, cooking into fried rice and stews after a day or two, topping rice and noodles

Salt the cabbage for thirty minutes and squeeze it before mixing so it takes the seasoning properly. Eaten immediately it tastes like a seasoned raw salad, sharp and garlicky and not at all sour, because fermentation is what creates the sourness and it has not happened yet. Left covered in the fridge for two or three days it starts to develop real tang and becomes much closer to what you wanted. If you intend to ferment it properly rather than eat it fresh, follow a tested recipe and do not reduce the salt, because the brining step is a safety step in a ferment rather than a seasoning choice.

The honest least-bad answer, included because it is what most people try first and it is not enough.

Best for

adding Korean chilli character to a dish that has to go ahead regardless, soups where the vegetable bulk comes from elsewhere

This gives you the colour and the heat and none of the other three things kimchi was doing. Without the acid the dish tastes heavy and flat, without the vegetable bulk a kimchi fried rice has nothing to chew, and without the fermented funk it tastes generically spicy rather than Korean. The tablespoon of vinegar is the most important part of this substitute, not the chilli. Accept that you are making a spicy dish rather than a kimchi dish, and it will still be good.