Pla ra substitutes

Mash the anchovy paste into the fish sauce with a fork before adding, so it disperses instead of clumping. This is the best swap you can assemble from a regular supermarket.

Best for

som tam pla ra, larb, nam phrik dips, gaeng om

The anchovy paste is what makes this work, bringing the muddy, oily, slightly thick quality that pla ra has and fish sauce completely lacks. Even so, the result is noticeably cleaner and a little sweeter than the real thing, so a green papaya salad made this way tastes bright and sharp rather than deep and swampy. Add another quarter teaspoon of anchovy paste if it still tastes thin.

Filipino bagoong isda, Vietnamese mam ca, or Burmese ngapi are all salted fermented fish and sit far closer to pla ra than a clear bottled fish sauce does. Use the same volume the recipe asks for.

Best for

som tam pla ra, Isan and Lao dips, any recipe where the sauce should be cloudy

This is the nearest thing most Western cooks can actually buy, and you get the funk, the pieces and the murk. Salt levels vary a lot between brands, so add two thirds of the amount, taste, and build from there. Shrimp-based bagoong alamang is a different animal and reads distinctly shrimpy rather than fishy.

Use less than the recipe's pla ra volume, because bottled fish sauce carries more salt per spoon.

Best for

som tam, weeknight cooking, when you have nothing else

This is what most recipes quietly suggest and it is fine as far as it goes. Salt and general savoriness land correctly. What disappears is the fermented barnyard funk and the cloudiness, so what you have made is essentially som tam Thai rather than som tam pla ra. It is a good salad, just a different one.

Wrap the shrimp paste in foil and toast it in a dry pan for a minute a side until it smells sharp and nutty, then mash it into the fish sauce.

Best for

nam phrik, som tam, stir-fried greens, curry pastes

Toasting is the whole trick, because raw shrimp paste tastes harsh and sour. This gets you real pungency and some body, but the funk arrives from a shrimp direction, so the dish tastes sweeter and more perfumed than the fishy, mineral depth of pla ra. Start small, since shrimp paste is much stronger by volume.

Whisk the miso with the fish sauce and a teaspoon of water until smooth. Aged darker miso works far better here than sweet white miso.

Best for

dressings, dips, soups, cooks with no fermented fish on hand

Miso supplies two things fish sauce cannot: thickness and a long fermented finish. The gap is obvious though, because the funk is bean-derived, so a salad dressed this way tastes rounder, nuttier and sweeter, and the mineral fish note is missing. Reach for this when you want depth more than accuracy.

Mash together and let it sit a few minutes before using. The brine adds the faint sourness that months of fermentation give pla ra.

Best for

vegan som tam, vegan larb, vegan dips

Be clear-eyed about this one: it is salty, fermented and thick, and it is not pla ra. What it does well is stop a vegan papaya salad from tasting like nothing but lime and sugar. Add crumbled toasted nori or a pinch of kelp powder if you also want a marine note.