Salted shrimp (saeujeot) substitutes

The standard swap and the one most Korean home cooks reach for. Fish sauce is the same kind of ingredient as shrimp jeot, a salt-cured seafood ferment, so it delivers the same two jobs: aggressive salt and a rounded savoury depth that makes kimchi taste like food rather than spicy cabbage.

Best for

napa cabbage kimchi, cubed radish kimchi, Korean stews and soups, seasoned dipping sauces

Expect a noticeably sharper, more pointed funk and a browner brine, because anchovy is more assertive than shrimp and the liquid carries colour that the pale shrimp do not. Korean myeolchi-jeot is the closest of all; Thai or Vietnamese fish sauce is slightly sweeter and cleaner. You also lose the soft little shrimp bodies, which in kimchi are a texture nobody notices until they are gone.

Both are fermented shrimp, but they are different products: saeujeot is loose wet shrimp in brine, while belacan and kapi are dried, pressed, concentrated blocks. Use a third of the volume and toast it in a dry pan or wrap it in foil and heat it through first, which tames the raw ammoniac edge.

Best for

kimchi when nothing else is available, spicy braises, stir-fried greens

This is a real compromise, not an equal. It is several times funkier, distinctly darker, and it will turn a pale kimchi paste a murky grey-brown. The flavour reads as Malaysian or Thai rather than Korean. Dissolve it in a spoonful of warm water before mixing so it does not sit in lumps.

Anchovies in oil are salt-cured fish, so mashed to a paste they cover the savoury half of what saeujeot contributes, and the added salt covers the rest. This is the most likely thing to already be in a Western pantry.

Best for

kimchi, stews, braised pork, dressings

Rinse the oil off first or the kimchi paste turns slick. The result is fishier and rounder than shrimp jeot and reads slightly Mediterranean, but in a paste loaded with gochugaru and garlic that difference mostly disappears. Anchovy paste from a tube works too, about 1 teaspoon plus the salt.

Dried shrimp are cooked and sun-dried rather than fermented, so grinding them fine in a spice grinder gives you concentrated shrimp flavour and the salt closes the gap. Good when you want the shrimp identity without the ferment.

Best for

kimchi, radish kimchi, soups, stir-fries

Noticeably sweeter and toastier and completely missing the sour-funky fermented edge, so a kimchi made this way tastes cleaner and a bit flat at first, then improves a lot after a week in the fridge as the cabbage itself sours. Grind it genuinely fine or you get sandy grit.

A seafood-free route that keeps the dish Korean. Soy sauce supplies salt and glutamate, doenjang supplies the fermented depth and a little body.

Best for

vegetarian kimchi, stews, braises, seasoned vegetables

The result is beanier and earthier rather than marine, and the kimchi brine will be darker. It genuinely works, it just tastes like a vegetarian kimchi, which is a real style in Korea rather than a failure.

There is no vegan ingredient that reproduces the specific soft, sweet-salty, slightly funky character of saeujeot. What you can do is replace its two measurable functions: bring the salt back to exactly where it was, and add glutamate-rich kelp or dried mushroom for savoury depth.

Best for

vegan kimchi, vegan stews

Be straightforward with yourself about the result: it tastes clean, bright and vegetal, and a Korean cook would immediately notice the missing seafood note. It is still very good kimchi. Grind dried kombu or dried shiitake in a spice grinder, or steep a strip of kombu in the small amount of water you use to loosen the paste.