Squid ink substitutes

The most honest reconstruction, because it addresses both halves of what ink does. Anchovy paste or fish sauce gives you the salty, deeply savoury, unmistakably marine backbone; the charcoal or colouring gives you the dramatic black. What you will not get is ink's particular quality, which is softer and rounder than anchovy - less fishy, less sharp, more like the inside of a mussel shell with a faint mineral edge. A dish made this way tastes slightly more aggressively fishy and salty.

Best for

arroz negro and black paella, squid ink pasta sauces, black risotto, seafood stews

Add the anchovy paste early, dissolved into the sofrito or the hot oil, so it melts and loses its identity - stirred in late it tastes like anchovy sitting on top of the dish. Cut back the salt in the recipe by at least a third, because both anchovy paste and fish sauce are very salty. Activated charcoal is flavourless but drying, so use a light hand.

The version a Spanish home cook without ink would actually make, and the best-tasting option on this list. Squid and cuttlefish simmered into a rice dish release a sweet, briny, faintly nutty flavour that is the real foundation of arroz negro - the ink amplifies it rather than creating it. The dish comes out brown-grey rather than black, so it loses all its visual drama, but the flavour is genuinely close and the texture is better because you have actual seafood in it.

Best for

arroz negro, black paella, seafood risotto, squid pasta dishes

Brown the squid in hot oil first, then remove it and add it back at the end - long cooking turns it rubbery, and thirty seconds too many is the difference between tender and bouncy. If you buy whole uncleaned squid or cuttlefish, the ink sac is inside it: a small silvery-black pouch near the head. Pierce it into the pan and you have your ink for free, which is how these dishes were originally made.

Clam juice reduced hard gives a clean, sweet, unmistakably ocean flavour that is closer to ink's roundness than anchovy is - less pungent, more delicate, more shellfish than fish. It is the best flavour match of the non-ink options. What it cannot do at all is colour, so it needs a partner. It also adds liquid, so account for that in a rice dish where the liquid ratio matters.

Best for

black risotto and rice dishes, pasta sauces, seafood soups and stews, fish dishes

Reduce it in a separate small pan until it is syrupy and concentrated, then stir it in - poured in unreduced it just waters the dish down. If you have cooked mussels or clams, the strained liquid from the pot is better than anything bottled and free. Bottled clam juice is salty, so hold back on salt until you taste.

This does exactly one thing, which is turn food genuinely black - not grey, not purple, properly black - with no flavour of its own. Used alone in place of ink, you get a striking-looking dish that tastes of nothing marine at all: black pasta that tastes like plain pasta, or black rice that tastes like plain rice. It also has a subtly drying, chalky effect at higher doses that makes a sauce feel less silky.

Best for

black pasta dough, black bread and buns, visual effect in any dish, black aioli or mayonnaise

Use food-grade activated charcoal only, sold as a baking ingredient, and use it sparingly - it can interfere with the absorption of medications, so it is not something to eat in quantity or to serve to someone on medication without thought. Always pair it with a savoury element if the dish is meant to taste of the sea. Sift it before adding or it clumps into grey specks.

A left-field option that works surprisingly well for colour and body in doughs and thick sauces. It produces a deep charcoal-grey rather than true black, and it adds a definite toasted, nutty, slightly bitter flavour that is completely unlike squid ink. Black sesame pasta is a genuinely good thing to eat, but it is not black pasta as an Italian or Spanish recipe intends - it reads East Asian.

Best for

fresh pasta dough, noodles, bread and buns, dark sauces

Only worth doing when the dish can absorb a nutty flavour, so pair it with sesame oil, soy, or mushrooms rather than with clams and saffron. Reduce the liquid in a dough slightly, since sesame paste is oily. It will not give you black rice or black risotto - it clumps in liquid and looks muddy.

Frequently the right call. Squid ink is a colour-and-accent ingredient, not a structural one - remove it and you have a good seafood paella, seafood risotto or seafood pasta instead of a black one. Adding more squid, prawns or mussels and a pinch of saffron or smoked paprika gives the dish its own identity rather than leaving it tasting like it is missing something.

Best for

paella and rice dishes, seafood pasta, risotto, any dish where the colour is the only loss

Be honest with whoever you are feeding about what they are getting, especially if the recipe title promised black pasta. Nothing about this is a failure; a golden seafood paella is a great dish on its own terms. Do not try to fake the black with soy sauce or balsamic vinegar - both go muddy brown and drag in flavours that fight with saffron and shellfish.