Samphire substitute

Best substitute

Fine green beans or thin asparagus, blanched and salted

Use the same amount by weight, plus a generous pinch of flaky sea salt and a squeeze of lemon as the samphire you are replacing

Best for serving alongside white fish and salmon

Different taste

Samphire is really a seasoning vegetable. Its job on a plate of fish is to deliver salt and a clean marine, mineral note along with a crisp snapping bite, which means any substitute has to bring both saltiness and crunch or it will not read the same. The most practical swap is fine green beans or thin asparagus, blanched 90 seconds and finished with flaky salt and a squeeze of lemon, matched weight for weight, which nails the snap but tastes sweet and grassy instead of saline. Crumbling a scrap of nori or a teaspoon of rehydrated wakame over the top closes most of the remaining gap. Rinsed capers scattered over, at about a third of the volume, give the right salty pop but taste pickled and sour. Being straight with you: nothing else is both as salty and as crunchy as samphire, so accept that the plate will read as a green vegetable with the fish rather than as samphire, and remember to season the rest of the dish less if you swap in something unsalted, or more if you leave the samphire out.

Other samphire substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Sea purslane, sea kale or oyster leaf
Close match
Use the same amount by weight
The genuinely closest substitutes, because they are also saltmarsh and coastal plants and carry real salinity of their own.
What changes
Sea purslane is softer and slightly slippery rather than crunchy, sea kale is crisper and mildly cabbagey, and oyster leaf tastes startlingly of oysters. All three read as coastal in a way nothing from a supermarket does.
Best for
fish and shellfish, restaurant-style plating, foraged summer cooking
Hard to buy unless you have a good fishmonger, a specialist greengrocer or a saltmarsh nearby. Only forage if you can identify the plant with certainty and the ground is clean, and rinse very thoroughly.
3Capers or caperberries, rinsed
Taste and texture differ
About ⅓ the volume of samphire
The right idea for the salinity and they give a satisfying salty pop, but they are pickled, so the flavour arrives sour and sharp rather than clean and marine.
What changes
Caperberries have more of a crunch than small capers and look better scattered over a fillet.
Best for
pan-fried fish with brown butter, seafood pasta, potato and fish salads, scattering over a finished dish
Rinse well and pat dry, or the vinegar will dominate. Use much less than you would samphire, since a tablespoon of capers is as salty as a large handful of samphire. Salt-packed capers taste cleaner than brined ones and are closer to what you want.
4Rehydrated wakame or dulse
Different texture
Use 1 tablespoon dried seaweed for every 100 g samphire, soaked 5 minutes
This is the option that gets the flavour right and the texture completely wrong.
What changes
Wakame and dulse deliver exactly the saline, iodine, seaside note samphire has, but they are soft and slithery rather than crisp, so they work stirred into a sauce or a broth and not as a vegetable on the plate.
Best for
fish broths and chowders, butter sauces, seafood risotto, dressings, stirring through pasta
Soak in cold water, then squeeze out and chop finely. Taste before you salt the dish, as dried seaweed is very salty. Use dulse rather than kombu, which is much tougher and meant for stock only.
5Purslane or ice plant
Different taste
Use the same amount by weight, plus flaky salt
Both are succulents with the same fleshy, juicy crunch samphire has, which makes them the closest textural match in the vegetable world.
What changes
Purslane is faintly lemony and ice plant is watery-fresh with a slight saline hint, so with enough flaky salt on top the illusion is decent.
Best for
raw or barely wilted alongside fish, salads, plating, summer cooking
Use raw or wilted for no more than 30 seconds, since both collapse to nothing with real cooking. Ice plant in particular is often sold with the salt crystals visible on its leaves and is the better of the two here.
6Sugar snap peas or mangetout, blanched
Different taste
Use the same amount by weight, plus flaky salt
Purely a texture substitute, and an honest one.
What changes
You get bright green and a good snap, but they are distinctly sweet, so a plate of grilled mackerel with sugar snaps tastes like a different dish rather than a variation on the same one. Salt heavily and add lemon.
Best for
when the fishmonger has nothing else, family cooking, cold seafood salads
Slice them lengthways on the diagonal so they look less like peas and more like a scattered green. 60 to 90 seconds in boiling water is enough.

What is Samphire?

Samphire is Marsh samphire is a jointed, bright-green succulent that grows on tidal saltmarshes and is sold in British fishmongers through the summer, also known as sea asparagus, sea beans, glasswort or by its botanical name Salicornia.

Cooking tips

Do not salt the cooking water and do not season samphire at the table. It is naturally salty enough that a good handful can make a whole plate taste over-seasoned, so salt the fish more lightly than usual to compensate. The flip side matters too: if you substitute an unsalted green, you will need to add salt back.
Rinse it hard under cold running water. It grows in tidal mud and there is almost always grit trapped in the joints, which is the single most common complaint about samphire.
Two to three minutes in boiling water or one minute tossed in butter is the limit. Any longer and it goes limp and turns from bright green to a dull khaki, and the stems slump instead of snapping.
The lower stems are woody and stringy on larger, later-season samphire. Rather than trimming them, hold a stem by the base and pull the flesh off between your teeth, the way you would with a globe artichoke leaf. Younger early-summer samphire can be eaten whole.
Samphire is at its best from roughly June to late August in the UK, and outside that window it is either unavailable or tough and woody. If a recipe calls for it in December, it was almost certainly written with the summer season in mind and a substitute is the right call.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just leave the samphire out?

Yes, but salt the rest of the dish a little more generously than the recipe says, because samphire was contributing seasoning as well as a vegetable. If you want something in that slot, buttered spinach or fine green beans with lemon will do the job of a green side, and a scrap of crumbled nori over the fish will hint at the sea note you have lost.

What does samphire actually taste like?

Salty first and foremost, then green and slightly mineral, with a note people often describe as tasting of the sea or of oyster liquor. The texture is a fleshy, juicy snap somewhere between a green bean and a fresh pea pod. It is much saltier than most people expect on the first bite.

Is samphire the same as sea asparagus or sea beans?

Yes. Marsh samphire, sea asparagus, sea beans, glasswort, pousse-pierre and Salicornia are all names for the same plant, and which one you see depends on where you are shopping. Rock samphire is a different plant altogether, with a resinous, carroty, faintly medicinal flavour, and it is usually pickled rather than blanched.

Can I use asparagus instead of samphire?

Yes, and thin asparagus is the closest-looking swap, but it will taste sweet and grassy rather than salty and marine. Blanch it for 90 seconds, finish it with flaky salt and lemon, and if you have nori or dried wakame, crumble a little over the top. That combination gets you surprisingly close.

Do I need to soak samphire before cooking?

A rinse is enough for young samphire. If yours tastes very salty, a 10 minute soak in cold water will draw some of it out, and some cooks blanch it in unsalted water and discard that water for the same reason. Never soak it in salted water.

Related substitutes

More vegetables & aromatics substitutes

Samphire substitute

Other samphire substitutes

2Sea purslane, sea kale or oyster leaf

3Capers or caperberries, rinsed

4Rehydrated wakame or dulse

5Purslane or ice plant

6Sugar snap peas or mangetout, blanched