Sugar snap peas substitutes

The same family and the obvious swap. The difference is real but small: a snow pea is flat, thin and papery where a sugar snap is round and juicy, so the dish comes out crisp and delicate rather than crunchy and bursting. They are slightly less sweet and cook faster, in about 90 seconds in a hot pan against two to three minutes for sugar snaps, so add them later than the recipe says or they go limp.

Best for

stir-fries, salads, spring pasta, sheet-pan dinners, crudites

Pull the tough string off the straight side if the pods are large. Slicing them on the diagonal makes them look deliberate rather than like a substitution.

Excellent crunch and widely available, and they hold up far better than sugar snaps to longer cooking, so they suit a braise or a sheet-pan tray better. They are firmer, squeakier and distinctly less sweet, and they taste green and grassy rather than sugary, so a stir-fry that relied on the sugar snaps for sweetness will taste flatter. A pinch of sugar in the sauce, or a splash of mirin, puts that back.

Best for

stir-fries, sheet-pan dinners, salads, braises, steamed sides

Add them two to three minutes before you would have added the sugar snaps. Slim haricots verts are closer in tenderness than fat standard green beans.

Sweet, green and juicy in a similar way, and in a spring dish it can be better than the sugar snaps. The flavour is unmistakably asparagus rather than pea, more mineral and grassy with a faint bitterness, so it changes the character of the dish rather than hiding in it. Thin spears cook in about 90 seconds; anything thicker than a pencil should be halved lengthways first or it stays woody.

Best for

spring pasta, risotto, stir-fries, salads, roasted trays

Snap off the woody ends. Asparagus overcooks from crisp to grey and floppy in under a minute, so watch it more closely than you would sugar snaps.

The best choice if crunch matters more than sweetness and you want the vegetable to survive a hot pan. Broccolini stays firm, browns nicely and holds a sauce in its florets, which sugar snaps never do. It tastes decisively of brassica, faintly sulphurous and a bit bitter, which is a bigger flavour change than any other option here, so it works in a garlicky or soy-based dish and less well in a delicate spring salad.

Best for

stir-fries, roasted trays, noodle dishes, steamed sides

Give it three to four minutes and a splash of water in a covered pan to cook the stems through, then uncover to drive off the moisture.

This is the swap for sweetness and colour, not for texture, and it is worth being clear about that. Frozen peas are sweeter than sugar snaps and turn a lovely bright green, so a pasta or risotto ends up tasting right and looking right, but every bite of crunch is gone and the dish reads softer. Frozen edamame keeps a firm bite and adds a nutty, beany flavour, which is a better texture match and a bigger flavour change.

Best for

pasta, risotto, fried rice, soups, pea salads

Add them in the last minute only. Frozen peas are blanched already and go grey and dull if you cook them for five minutes.

The honest least-bad option when you have nothing green and podded in the house. Any of these will keep a stir-fry from being uniformly soft, which is the main thing you lose. None of them is sweet: celery is saline and faintly bitter, bok choy stems are watery and mild, green pepper is grassy and assertive. Expect a dish that has the right texture and clearly different flavour, and add a teaspoon of sugar or honey to the sauce to make up the sweetness.

Best for

stir-fries, fried rice, noodle dishes, cold salads

Cut them into pieces about the size and shape of a sugar snap pod so the dish still looks composed. Add them at the same point in the cooking.