Salgam substitutes

A lacto-fermented beetroot drink from eastern Europe, made much the same way as salgam and with the same deep colour.

Best for

drinking cold alongside grilled meat, serving in place of salgam with raki, sour splash in soups and lentil dishes, salad dressings

The best available match: genuinely fermented, genuinely earthy, genuinely purple. It is usually less salty and slightly sweeter than salgam, and beet earthiness reads as rounder and softer than black carrot, so the drink tastes gentler and less bracing. Add salt to taste and a pinch of cayenne or Maras pepper if you want the aci, or hot, version.

The liquid from a jar of naturally fermented sour dill pickles, which is salty, sour and alive in exactly the way salgam is.

Best for

drinking as a sour shot with kebabs, marinades, sharpening soups, beans and lentils, dressings

Salt and acidity land very close, and the fermented funk is right, which is what most substitutes miss. What is absent is the earthy carrot-and-turnip depth, so it tastes cleaner and more dill-and-garlic. Use brine from fermented pickles rather than vinegar pickles if you can, since vinegar brine tastes flatly sharp instead of tangy. The beet juice is purely cosmetic but it makes the glass look right.

The most widely stocked fermented vegetable liquid in Western supermarkets and health shops.

Best for

sour component in cooked dishes, drinking, once diluted and chilled, marinades, cold soups

Reliably sour, salty and fermented, and easy to find, which makes it the practical choice. It is stronger and more sulphurous than salgam, with an unmistakable cabbage note, so drunk neat it tastes distinctly like a different beverage; diluting takes the edge off. Add beet juice for colour and chilli for heat, and chill it hard, since sauerkraut juice at room temperature is a hard sell.

A five-minute imitation, honest about not being fermented, and genuinely the best thing you can improvise.

Best for

serving with kebabs when guests are already at the table, a sour splash in a dish, understanding what salgam tastes like, salad dressings

The juice supplies earthiness and colour, the brine supplies the fermented tang, the salt supplies the savoury backbone. It comes out sweeter and less complex than the real thing, because fermentation eats the sugar and builds the funk that no shortcut can fake. Let it sit in the fridge an hour and it improves. Add a squeeze of lemon if it still tastes flat.

A sour fermented drink that is easy to buy and shares salgam's acidity and slight fizz.

Best for

drinking as a sour non-alcoholic option, when nothing else fermented is available

Sour and lively, and the carbonation gives it some of the same bite, but kombucha is sweetened tea at heart so it tastes of vinegar and sugar rather than salt and vegetables, and the colour is wrong. Salt helps more than you would expect. Use it as a drink rather than in a dish, where its sweetness will show up in the wrong place.

Worth saying plainly, because salgam's flavour comes from a specific fermentation of black carrot that has no close analogue outside Turkey.

Best for

setting expectations, deciding whether to seek out the real thing

Real salgam is savoury, sour, faintly bitter and deeply earthy, with a saline finish that makes it work next to grilled meat and raki. Every substitute here gets two of those qualities and misses at least one. If it matters, Turkish grocers stock it cheaply in plastic bottles, usually labelled sade for plain and aci for hot, and it keeps for weeks in the fridge.