Kumquat substitute

Best substitute

Calamansi Juice

Use the same amount as the kumquat you are replacing

Best for Vietnamese drinks and sodas

Close match

Work out which half of the fruit your recipe wants. If it is squeezed into a drink, a dipping salt or a marinade, the job is sharp acid plus a perfumed bitterness, and calamansi juice is a 1:1 match, with fresh lime juice plus a little finely grated orange zest a very close second. If whole sliced kumquats are being candied, simmered into marmalade or dropped into tea, the job is sweet aromatic peel, and thin slices of Meyer lemon or a whole small mandarin sliced skin and all get you closest. Bottled lime juice is the one thing to avoid, because the entire point of a kumquat is fresh peel oil and bottled juice has none.

Other kumquat substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Fresh Lime Juice Plus Grated Orange Zest
Close match
Use 1 tbsp lime juice plus ¼ tsp grated orange zest for every 4 kumquats
This is the workaround worth memorising.
What changes
Lime supplies the acid, which lands harder and sharper than kumquat, and the orange zest supplies the sweet-bitter peel perfume that lime alone completely lacks. Together they read as a small sour citrus rather than as lime.
Best for
drinks, dipping salt, grilled meat marinades, salad dressings
Grate the zest directly over the bowl so the oil that sprays out lands in the food. Do not use orange juice instead of zest, because juice adds sweetness and water but almost no aroma.
3Meyer Lemon, Sliced Thin With the Peel
Close match
Use the same amount by weight
A Meyer lemon has a thin, sweet, low-bitterness skin, which makes it the best stand-in when whole kumquats are being cooked.
What changes
Candied or simmered, it comes out gentler and more lemony, missing the slight resinous bitterness that makes kumquat marmalade interesting, but the texture and set are almost identical.
Best for
marmalade and preserves, candied fruit, roasting alongside chicken or pork, tea
Slice it paper-thin and remove the seeds. If you want the missing bitterness back, leave a strip or two of ordinary lemon peel in the pot.
4Small Mandarin or Clementine, Sliced Skin and All
Different taste
Use 1 small mandarin for every 4 to 5 kumquats, plus 1 tsp lime juice
Sliced whole with the peel on, a mandarin gives you the aromatic-peel-plus-flesh experience of a kumquat but far sweeter and much less sour, so a dish made with it tastes candied rather than bracing.
What changes
The added lime juice is what makes it work rather than just taste like orange.
Best for
fruit salads, drinks with ice and sugar, roasting, garnishes
Mandarin peel goes bitter if boiled hard, so add it late in cooking. This is a poor choice for marmalade, where the low pectin in the peel gives a loose set.
5Lemon Juice Plus a Pinch of Sugar
Different taste
Use 1 tbsp lemon juice plus ¼ tsp sugar for every 4 kumquats
The everyday-kitchen answer.
What changes
Lemon is a rounder, less floral acid than kumquat and the sugar takes the hard edge off it, which approximates the sweet-sour balance of a whole kumquat squeezed into a glass. What is missing is the perfume, so the result tastes correct but plain.
Best for
drinks, dressings, dipping sauces, when there is nothing else in the house
Add a piece of lemon peel twisted over the glass to recover some aroma. This is the swap where the difference is most noticeable in a drink and least noticeable in a cooked dish.
6Yuzu Juice
Different taste
3:4
Intensely aromatic and very sour, with a grapefruit-and-pine character that is more distinctive than kumquat.
What changes
Use less than the recipe says or it takes over. It is an excellent citrus in its own right but it will make the dish taste Japanese rather than Vietnamese.
Best for
dressings, dipping sauces, cocktails
Bottled yuzu juice is usually salted. Check the label and reduce the salt elsewhere in the recipe if it is.

What is Kumquat?

Kumquat is The kumquat is a thumb-sized citrus eaten whole, with a sweet fragrant edible peel wrapped around very sour flesh, and the small round fruit Vietnamese cooks call quat is usually its close relative the calamondin.

Cooking tips

A kumquat is eaten peel-first, which is the opposite of every other citrus. The skin is the sweet part and the flesh is the sour part, so if a recipe says to slice them whole, do not peel them or you throw away the flavour.
For juice, roll and squeeze them whole through a small sieve. Four to five kumquats give roughly a tablespoon of juice, which is useful when a recipe lists them by the piece.
The seeds are bitter and there are a lot of them for the size of the fruit. Halve and flick them out before candying or making marmalade, and strain hard if you are juicing.
In Vietnamese cooking the fruit shows up as quat, and in a dipping salt it is squeezed over salt and black pepper right before eating so the peel oil is still volatile. Whatever you substitute, add the acid at the last moment for the same reason.
Blanching sliced kumquats in boiling water for one minute and draining removes most of the harsh bitterness before candying. Do the same with any thick-peeled citrus you swap in.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just use lime instead of kumquat?

For juice, yes, and it is the most common swap. Use it 1:1 and expect a sharper, more one-dimensional sourness. The improvement worth two seconds of effort is grating a little orange zest in with it, because that puts back the sweet peel perfume that makes kumquat taste like kumquat rather than just sour.

Are kumquats and calamansi the same thing?

They are different fruits but they are used interchangeably and the confusion is understandable. Kumquats are oval with a sweet peel. Calamansi is round, greener and more acidic. In Vietnam the round sour fruit called quat is usually calamansi, which is why recipes translated from Vietnamese say kumquat and show a round fruit. For cooking purposes they swap 1:1.

Can I leave kumquat out entirely?

It depends what it is doing. In a drink or a dipping salt, no, because it is the acid and the dish will taste flat and heavy without any sourness at all. In a marmalade or a candied fruit tray, the kumquat is the whole point and you should make a different preserve instead. In a marinade or a braise, you can leave it out and add a squeeze of any citrus at the end.

How many kumquats replace one lime?

About four to six kumquats give the juice of a small lime, though kumquat juice is slightly less acidic, so taste as you go. Going the other way, half a lime plus a quarter teaspoon of grated orange zest stands in for four kumquats.

What can I use for candied kumquats at Lunar New Year?

Thin-sliced Meyer lemon is the best substitute, because it has the same thin sweet peel and takes syrup the same way. Ordinary lemon works if you blanch the slices once in boiling water to knock back the bitterness. Do not use mandarin peel, which turns bitter and mushy when boiled in syrup for a long time.

Related substitutes

More fruits substitutes

Kumquat substitute

Other kumquat substitutes

2Fresh Lime Juice Plus Grated Orange Zest

3Meyer Lemon, Sliced Thin With the Peel

4Small Mandarin or Clementine, Sliced Skin and All

5Lemon Juice Plus a Pinch of Sugar

6Yuzu Juice