Takuan substitutes

The bright yellow pickled daikon sold in vacuum packs and jars at any Korean grocer, usually in thick rounds or long strips for kimbap.

Best for

kimbap, sushi rolls, bento, rice bowls, serving alongside fried food

So close that most people cannot tell them apart, because it is the same radish pickled in a similar sweet vinegar brine. Danmuji is typically a little sweeter and cleaner-tasting, where vinegar-brined takuan has more of a sharp edge and traditional rice-bran takuan has an aged, faintly cheesy funk that danmuji has none of. In a kimbap or a sushi roll this difference is invisible. If you are eating it plain as a pickle, danmuji tastes tamer.

The pickled daikon-and-carrot shreds that go into banh mi, sold in jars or easily made. Drain hard and cut into longer strips if you need them for a roll.

Best for

rice bowls, sandwiches, bento, kimbap, salads

Same vegetable, similar crunch, and it is widely available. The differences are that do chua is much more sharply vinegary and much less sweet than takuan, it is shredded rather than in batons so it will not hold a line down the middle of a roll, and the carrot makes it orange rather than yellow. A kimbap made with it tastes tangier and a bit thinner. Toss the drained shreds with a quarter teaspoon of sugar per tablespoon to close most of the gap.

Cut daikon into long pencil-thick batons, toss with the salt and sugar for ten minutes, then add the vinegar and a pinch of turmeric for colour. Refrigerate thirty minutes, better after a few hours.

Best for

kimbap, sushi rolls, bento, rice bowls, pickle plates

The best answer if you can get a daikon, because it is the right vegetable at the right sweetness and it looks correct in a roll. What thirty minutes cannot produce is what months produce: the dense, almost translucent crunch of a properly cured takuan, and the deep aged aroma of the rice-bran kind. Yours will be crisper and fresher-tasting, with a faint raw radish peppery note at the centre of each baton. Nobody will complain, and it is genuinely good.

Drain, cut into long batons roughly the size of a takuan strip, and blot dry before rolling them into rice.

Best for

kimbap, sushi rolls in an emergency, bento, sandwiches

This is a pantry rescue and it works better than it sounds, because the sweet-sour balance of a bread-and-butter pickle is genuinely in the same place as takuan. Two things give it away. Cucumber is softer and wetter than daikon, so the roll loses that ringing crunch and can go slightly soggy if you do not blot it. And the mustard seed, clove and turmeric in the brine read as distinctly American picnic rather than Japanese. Use fewer of them than you would takuan.

Middle Eastern pink pickled turnips, or any firm brine-pickled root, cut into strips and drained.

Best for

rice bowls, bento, pickle plates, serving alongside rich food

Excellent on texture, which is the job that matters most: turnip and kohlrabi stay every bit as crunchy as daikon. Where it diverges is sweetness and aroma. These are salty and sour with no sugar behind them and often plenty of garlic, so the pickle tastes sharper and more savoury, and in the case of the Levantine version it arrives bright pink. Toss with half a teaspoon of sugar per quarter cup if you want it closer.

The sweet pink or pale pickled ginger from the sushi counter, or the red shredded beni shoga scattered over yakisoba and gyudon.

Best for

bento, rice bowls, alongside fried or fatty food, yakisoba

Not a lookalike at all, but it does exactly the same job at the table, which is resetting your palate between mouthfuls of rice and rich food with a hit of sweet acid. Use a third as much, because ginger is far more assertive than radish and a takuan-sized portion of gari will bulldoze the meal. It gives you none of the substantial crunch, so it is a poor choice inside a rolled sushi or kimbap and a good one beside a plate.