Shirataki noodles substitutes

Strips or spirals cut from canned hearts of palm, sold in pouches as a low-carb pasta.

Best for

low-carb pasta dishes, noodle bowls, creamy sauces, pasta salads

Around 20 calories a serving rather than nearly none, and much more pleasant to eat: tender and slightly yielding where shirataki is rubbery and bouncy. The catch is a faint tang, because they are packed in acid, so rinse them well and simmer them a couple of minutes in the sauce to mellow it. They also break into shorter pieces if you stir hard, so fold rather than toss.

Clear, crunchy noodles made from kelp, sodium alginate and water, also close to calorie-free.

Best for

cold noodle salads, low-carb stir-fries, spicy sesame noodles

The nearest match on calories and on that see-through look, and like shirataki they never really soften. They start out crunchy rather than springy, which some people dislike; soaking them for 10 minutes in warm water with a squeeze of lemon and a pinch of baking soda genuinely transforms them into something soft and slippery. There is a very mild sea-mineral taste, noticeable in a plain dish, invisible in a sauced one.

Spiralised or julienned vegetable strands, very low in carbohydrate and easy to make with a peeler.

Best for

low-carb pasta dishes, cold noodle salads, quick weeknight bowls

The big difference is water. Zucchini releases a lot of liquid, which thins your sauce into a puddle, so salt the strands for 15 minutes, squeeze them and cook them for no more than two minutes. They go from crisp to limp very fast and cannot be simmered in a hot pot the way shirataki can. Cucumber noodles work only cold. Both taste faintly vegetal where shirataki tastes of nothing at all.

Bean thread or cellophane noodles, made from mung bean starch, which turn transparent and springy when cooked.

Best for

sukiyaki, oden and hot pot, Japanese and Korean simmered dishes, stir-fries

This is the answer if you want the texture rather than the calorie count: springy, slippery and translucent, and in a hot pot most people would not notice the swap. The difference is nutritional, not sensory: glass noodles are pure starch, so around 190 calories and 45g of carbohydrate per 2 oz. They also absorb broth greedily, so add them in the last five minutes or they drink the pot dry.

The same konjac noodle with a little tofu worked in, sold in the same refrigerated pouches.

Best for

low-carb pasta dishes, noodle soups, anyone who dislikes plain shirataki

Softer, whiter and considerably more like real pasta, with a slight beany taste and about 20 calories per serving instead of near zero. If someone has tried shirataki and hated the rubberiness, this is the version to hand them. It is more fragile, so keep the stirring gentle and skip the long dry-frying step.

An ordinary noodle, for when the recipe simply calls for shirataki and you do not care about the low-carbohydrate angle.

Best for

noodle soups, stir-fries, family meals

Worth saying plainly: if you are not counting carbohydrate, almost any thin noodle makes a nicer dinner than shirataki, and Japanese cooking uses glass noodles in most of the same dishes anyway. What you lose is the way shirataki holds its texture indefinitely in a simmering pot. Rice vermicelli goes soft in minutes and keeps absorbing liquid, so add it at the end.