Mirepoix substitutes

The actual recipe, which is what most people searching for a mirepoix substitute are really looking for.

Best for

stocks, braises, soups, stews, sauces, bolognese, roasts

Dice everything to roughly the same size so it cooks evenly, small for a quick sauce and larger for a long-simmered stock where it gets strained out anyway. Cook it in butter or oil over medium-low heat for eight to ten minutes without browning if you want a clean, sweet base, or push it to golden brown for a deeper, more caramelised flavour in a beef stew. This is the whole trick, and once you have done it once you will never need to search for it again.

Pre-diced onion, carrot and celery sold frozen, sometimes labelled soup starter or seasoning blend.

Best for

soups, stews, braises, stocks, chilli, weeknight cooking

Better than its reputation. The vegetables are diced and frozen raw, so the flavour is real, and in anything simmered for more than twenty minutes almost nobody could pick it out. The two differences are that frozen dice release water and will steam rather than sizzle at first, so give them a few extra minutes to drive the moisture off before you expect any browning, and that they never develop the same sweet caramelised edges as fresh. Do not thaw them, add them straight to the hot pan.

The Italian equivalent, essentially the same three vegetables cooked in olive oil, often with garlic.

Best for

bolognese, minestrone, tomato sauces, braises, bean dishes

Effectively interchangeable with mirepoix and a useful thing to know if your recipe uses one term and your cookbook uses the other. Soffritto is usually diced finer, cooked longer and softer, and made with olive oil rather than butter, which gives a fruitier, more peppery base against mirepoix's rounder, dairy-rich one. Italian versions often add garlic and sometimes parsley stems, which mirepoix classically does not. In a French braise the olive oil is a small but noticeable change in character.

A celery-free and carrot-free aromatic base built from allium and fennel.

Best for

fish stock, chicken braises, white sauces, soups, risotto

The right answer when you have no celery or carrot, or when you want a paler base. Leek is sweeter and softer than onion and gives a silkier result, while fennel provides the vegetal, slightly bitter counterpoint celery normally supplies plus a light anise note. The whole base ends up sweeter and paler, so a stew made this way looks lighter and tastes less earthy. This is closer to what French cooks would call a white mirepoix, and it is actually preferable in fish stock and pale sauces.

The bare-minimum version for when onion is genuinely the only aromatic in the house.

Best for

stews, soups, gravies, braises, pan sauces

Onion is the non-negotiable member of the trio because it supplies the sweetness and the savoury backbone; carrot and celery are supporting players. Celery seed is remarkably good at standing in for celery, though it is much more concentrated and turns bitter and soapy if you overdo it, so a quarter teaspoon is genuinely enough for a whole pot. The pinch of sugar replaces carrot's sweetness. What you lose is body and the faint earthiness carrot gives to a long braise, so the finished dish tastes slightly sharper and thinner.

The Louisiana version, which swaps carrot for green bell pepper.

Best for

gumbo, jambalaya, etouffee, red beans, chilli, hearty soups

Use this deliberately, not accidentally. Green bell pepper is grassy and slightly bitter where carrot is sweet and earthy, so the base tastes distinctly Southern rather than French. It is excellent in gumbo and completely wrong in a delicate French sauce, where the pepper flavour dominates everything and reads as out of place. If you only have bell pepper and you are cooking French, use less of it than you would carrot and add a pinch of sugar.