Pigeon peas substitutes

Almost the same size, almost the same texture, and the closest flavour of any common supermarket bean: earthy and mildly savoury rather than sweet. This is the swap to reach for first.

Best for

arroz con gandules, rice and peas, pelau, stewed peas, soups, salads

Black-eyed peas are a touch softer and creamier and their skins are more delicate, so they break up slightly more in a long-cooked rice pot than gandules do, which hold their shape stubbornly. The flavour is a little more mineral and less nutty. The black eye also shows in a pale rice, which is only a cosmetic difference but a visible one.

The traditional alternative in Jamaican cooking, where rice and peas is made with either gungo peas or red peas depending on the season, so this is not really a compromise at all.

Best for

Jamaican rice and peas, stew peas, soups, pelau, arroz con gandules

Kidney beans are much bigger and softer, with a mealy, almost floury interior where pigeon peas are firm and dense, so the pot goes from studded with little peas to chunky with beans and the cooking liquid thickens considerably more. They also stain the rice pinkish-brown, which is exactly right for Jamaican rice and peas and wrong for a pale Puerto Rican gandules rice. If you use dried kidney beans, soak them and then boil them hard for a full 10 minutes before simmering, which is a genuine food safety step for this bean specifically.

Nutty, firm and available everywhere, and they hold their shape through a long simmer as well as pigeon peas do, which is the main thing a rice pot needs from them.

Best for

arroz con gandules, stews, pelau, curries, soups, salads

Chickpeas are two or three times the size, so the dish looks quite different, and their flavour is more distinctly nutty and less earthy, which makes a gandules rice taste a bit more Mediterranean. Their skins can be tough after canning, and in a delicate soup that is noticeable. If it matters, halve them roughly with a knife before they go in so the scale reads closer to pigeon peas.

The right substitute when the recipe wants dried split pigeon peas rather than the green kind in a tin. Both are hulled split pulses that collapse into a puree, and both are used exactly the same way.

Best for

toor dal, sambar, dhal for roti, split pea soup, dal fry, khichdi

Split peas cook a little faster and break down more completely, so the dal comes out smoother and slightly sweeter, and it lacks the faint sourness and heavier body that toor dal gives a sambar. That difference matters most in South Indian dishes where the dal is the main flavour and hardly at all in a Trinidadian dhal that is going to be swizzled smooth with a dhal ghutni anyway.

Similar colour, similar size and a genuinely good dal in its own right. A frequent stand-in for toor dal in Indian home cooking.

Best for

dal, sambar, dhalpuri filling, soups, fritters

Chana dal is much more stubborn and stays in distinct nubs long after toor dal would have dissolved, so the dal ends up chunky and brothy rather than creamy, and the flavour is nuttier and firmer. Blitz half of it with a stick blender or crush it against the pot with a spoon at the end and the texture problem disappears entirely. It is also the better choice if you actually want texture, for instance in a dhalpuri filling.

The last-resort option, worth listing because they are in every freezer and because they get the colour and the scale of fresh green gandules right.

Best for

arroz con gandules for appearance, quick weeknight rice, soups where texture is not critical

This is a poor flavour match and it is worth being honest about that. Green peas are sweet and grassy where pigeon peas are earthy and savoury, so the rice tastes faintly of vegetable garden and the dish loses its backbone. Edamame is much better, being firmer and less sweet, and holds its shape well. Add either at the very end, since both turn to mush and grey out if they cook with the rice for twenty minutes.