Romesco sauce substitutes

This is not a substitute so much as romesco made with substitutions for the two hard-to-find items - jarred piquillo or roasted red peppers standing in for hand-roasted ones, and smoked paprika standing in for dried nora or choricero chillies. Blend it coarse, not smooth. It tastes genuinely like romesco: sweet, smoky, nutty, faintly sour, with a sandy body from the nuts and bread. Compared to the real thing it is a little sweeter and less deeply raisin-like, because nora chillies bring a dried-fruit complexity that paprika only hints at.

Best for

grilled vegetables and calcots, grilled or roasted fish, chicken and lamb, spooning over potatoes or eggs, sandwiches

Toast the almonds in a dry pan until they smell nutty - raw almonds make the sauce taste chalky and flat, and this single step is the difference between a decent romesco and a great one. Marcona almonds are the traditional choice and are richer and softer, but ordinary blanched almonds work fine once toasted. If you have a dried ancho or guajillo chilli, soak one in hot water for twenty minutes and blend it in for a real jump in depth.

Sold in most European and Middle Eastern groceries, ajvar is roasted red peppers and sometimes aubergine cooked down with oil, garlic and a little vinegar. It shares romesco's sweet-smoky roasted pepper backbone and its thick, spoonable body, so it does the same job on a plate. The gap is nuts and acid: ajvar tastes softer, jammier and rounder, without romesco's gritty almond body or its sharp sherry vinegar lift.

Best for

grilled vegetables, fish and chicken, sandwiches and toast, dipping bread

Stir two tablespoons of toasted crushed almonds and two teaspoons of sherry or red wine vinegar into half a cup of ajvar and you are most of the way to romesco. Add a pinch of smoked paprika if the ajvar is the mild kind. Hot ajvar already has chilli in it, so taste before adding more.

The Levantine cousin of romesco, and structurally almost identical: roasted red peppers, nuts, bread or breadcrumbs, garlic, oil and acid. The differences are the nut and the acid. Walnuts instead of almonds make it noticeably more bitter and tannic, and pomegranate molasses instead of sherry vinegar makes it sweet-sour and fruity rather than cleanly sharp. It usually carries cumin and more chilli heat too, so a dish made with it reads Middle Eastern instead of Catalan.

Best for

grilled vegetables and aubergine, lamb, flatbread and dips, roasted cauliflower

Delicious in its own right, so do not treat it as a compromise. If you want it closer to romesco, stir in a spoonful of toasted ground almonds and a splash of sherry vinegar to cut the pomegranate sweetness.

The supermarket-shelf answer. Red pepper pesto is sweet roasted pepper plus nuts plus cheese and oil, which lands close. Sun-dried tomato pesto swaps the sweet-roasted note for a concentrated, savoury, slightly leathery tomato flavour - saltier, tangier and more intense than romesco, and darker on the plate. Both usually contain Parmesan or Pecorino, which adds a cheesy savouriness romesco does not have.

Best for

grilled vegetables, pasta, chicken and fish, sandwiches and toast

These are much saltier than homemade romesco, so use a little less and hold back salt elsewhere. Loosen the jar with a tablespoon of olive oil and a teaspoon of vinegar - jarred pestos are pasty and romesco should be loose enough to spoon and spread. Not suitable if you need the sauce to be dairy free.

Wrong flavour, right role. Pesto is a thick, oily, nut-and-garlic pounded sauce spooned over grilled things, exactly like romesco, and on grilled vegetables or fish it will taste very good. But it is green, herbal and bright where romesco is red, sweet, smoky and earthy, so nobody will mistake one for the other. A plate of grilled calcots or asparagus with pesto is a different dish, not a Catalan one.

Best for

grilled vegetables, fish, chicken, potatoes, pasta

Choose this when the recipe uses romesco as a finishing sauce and you simply need something good on the plate tonight. Do not choose it when romesco is named in the dish title or when the sauce is meant to be the Catalan signature. Stirring in a teaspoon of smoked paprika does not turn pesto into romesco - it just makes muddy pesto.

The least-bad option if you have a nut allergy or no nuts in the house. Blend a jar of roasted red peppers with a garlic clove, smoked paprika, sherry vinegar, salt and olive oil. You keep the sweet smoky pepper flavour and the colour, and you lose the thing that makes romesco feel substantial - the almonds and bread give it body and a slightly sandy, satisfying texture. Without them it is a loose pepper puree that slides off food rather than clinging to it.

Best for

fish, grilled vegetables, eggs, nut-free versions of Catalan dishes

Thicken it with two tablespoons of toasted breadcrumbs or a slice of blended toasted bread, which is traditional in romesco anyway and gets you most of the body back with no nuts. Sunflower seeds, toasted and blended, are a decent nut-free stand-in for the almonds if seeds are safe for your eater.