Thai Eggplant substitute

Substitutes for Thai Eggplant with ratios

1. 2Chinese or Japanese eggplant, cut into 3 cm chunks

   Taste and texture differ

   Same weight

   The long, slim, pale purple aubergines with thin skin and few seeds.

   What changes

   Best for

   green curry, curry stir-fries, quick weeknight curries

   Tender, silky and sweet, with skin thin enough that it does not need peeling. The important thing is timing: it goes from firm to fully melting in about eight minutes and drinks up coconut milk as it goes, so the curry gets richer and the pieces almost disappear. Add it near the end and cut it thicker than you think you need to.

2. 3Globe or Italian eggplant, cubed

   Different texture

   Same weight, cut into 2 to 3 cm cubes

   The large purple aubergine every supermarket carries.

   What changes

   Best for

   any Thai curry when nothing else is available, cheap and easy shopping, curries you do not mind being creamy

   Perfectly usable and the biggest change on this list. The flesh is spongy with large seeds, so it soaks up oil, collapses into the sauce and turns the curry creamier and less distinct in texture. Salt the cubes for 15 minutes and pat them dry to reduce how much oil they drink, and add them for only the last eight to ten minutes of cooking.

3. 4Zucchini or chayote, cut into thick half-moons

   Different taste

   Same weight

   Firm mild squashes that keep their shape.

   What changes

   Best for

   green curry, when you want the vegetable to stay in one piece, shopping at an ordinary supermarket

   These hold their shape better than globe eggplant does and stay slightly crunchy, which is closer to what Thai eggplant actually does. What they have none of is the bitterness, so the curry is sweeter and more one-note. Chayote is firmer and blander of the two and is the better choice. Cut them into 2 cm pieces and add them in the last five minutes.

4. 5Green bell pepper or Anaheim, cut into chunks

   Different taste

   Same weight

   A crisp pepper standing in for the bitter, crunchy element.

   What changes

   Best for

   red curry, curry stir-fries, when the bitterness is what you want to keep

   Of everything that is not an eggplant, this comes closest to the slightly bitter, vegetal quality Thai eggplant contributes, and it keeps a real crunch through a short simmer. The catch is a distinct sweet pepper flavour that reads clearly as not-Thai, which is fine in a red curry and more obvious in a delicate green one.

5. 6Frozen green peas, for pea eggplant specifically

   Different taste

   Same volume

   A stand-in for the tiny pea eggplants, makhua puang, rather than the golf-ball kind.

   What changes

   Best for

   green curry and jungle curry that call for pea eggplant, keeping the pop-in-the-mouth texture, supermarket shopping

   Pea eggplants are used whole by the handful and are there for bitterness and a small burst of texture. Frozen peas give you the same size and the same pop, and then the opposite flavour: they are sweet where pea eggplant is markedly bitter. If that bitterness mattered to the dish, add a little extra lime, or a few thin slices of bitter melon if you can get it.