Tsukemono substitute

Best substitute

Asazuke You Make in 30 Minutes

2 cups sliced cucumber or napa cabbage, 1 tsp salt, then 1 tsp rice vinegar and a pinch of sugar

Best for rice bowls

Close match

Slice thin, toss with the salt, leave twenty to thirty minutes until water beads out, squeeze firmly, then dress with the vinegar and sugar. Optional additions are a strip of kombu, a few sesame seeds or a slice of ginger.

Other tsukemono substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Takuan (Japanese Pickled Daikon)
Close match
Use 2 to 3 thin slices for every person
The bright yellow crunchy daikon pickle sold in vacuum packs at Japanese and Korean groceries.
What changes
Slice thin and serve cold.
Best for
bento, rice bowls, teishoku sets, kimbap, alongside curry
The most common single tsukemono and often exactly what a recipe means when it says oshinko. It hits sweet, sour, salty and crunchy in one bite, which is why it works alone on a plate where other pickles need company. It is sweeter than most tsukemono, so if the rest of the meal is already sweet, such as teriyaki, a plainer salted cucumber gives better contrast. The traditional rice-bran kind smells strongly, which is normal, not spoilage.
3Kimchi, in a Small Portion
Different taste
Use 1 to 2 Tbsp for every person
Napa cabbage kimchi, served cold and drained, in a smaller portion than you would normally use.
What changes
Best for
rice bowls, bento, grilled meat, noodle dishes, fried rice
Does exactly the same work as tsukemono, resetting your palate between mouthfuls of rice with a hit of sour salt and crunch, and it is in far more refrigerators. The difference is loudness. Garlic, gochugaru and salted shrimp mean kimchi dominates a plate where tsukemono sits quietly beside it, so a delicate grilled fish and rice supper will taste Korean instead of Japanese. Use half the portion you would normally serve.
4Gari or Beni Shoga (Pickled Ginger)
Taste and texture differ
Use 5 or 6 slices, or 1 tsp shredded, for every person
The pale or pink sweet pickled ginger from the sushi counter, or the red shredded beni shoga scattered over yakisoba and gyudon.
What changes
Best for
bento, rice bowls, yakisoba, donburi, alongside fried food
Right job, different instrument. It resets the palate as effectively as any pickle and it is already in most people's refrigerators if they buy sushi. It is much more aggressive than a salted cucumber, so use a small amount, and it provides no vegetable bulk or substantial crunch, which means it feels sparse if it is the only pickle on the plate. Beni shoga is saltier and sharper than gari and better with savoury rice dishes.
5Umeboshi (Salted Plum)
Taste and texture differ
Use 1 small plum for every person, or ½ tsp umeboshi paste
One salted pickled plum, served whole on the rice or mashed into a paste and spread thinly.
What changes
Best for
plain rice, bento, onigiri, rice porridge, alongside grilled fish
The most extreme member of the family and it does the acid-and-salt job harder than anything else on this list, which is why a single plum flavours a whole bowl of rice. It gives you no crunch at all, being soft and fleshy, and its intensity is genuinely startling if you have not met one before. Use one small plum, warn anyone at the table who has not eaten umeboshi, and do not treat it as a vegetable side.
6Cornichons or Bread-and-Butter Pickles, Sliced Thin
Different taste
Use 3 or 4 thin slices for every person
Drain, slice thinly, blot dry, and serve a small quantity in a little dish beside the rice.
What changes
Best for
rice bowls, bento in an emergency, alongside fried food
The honest least-bad Western-pantry answer, and it is more usable than you would think because the salt, acid and crunch are all in the right places. What sticks out is the aromatics. Dill, mustard seed, clove and caraway are entirely absent from Japanese pickling, so the plate smells like a picnic. Bread-and-butter pickles are the better of the two, since their sweetness sits closer to takuan. Serve very few and slice them thin.
7Sauerkraut, Rinsed and Drained
Different taste
Use 1 Tbsp for every person, rinsed briefly and squeezed
Plain sauerkraut without caraway, rinsed under cold water for a few seconds, squeezed dry and served cold.
What changes
Best for
rice bowls, bento, alongside rich or fried dishes
It is salt-fermented cabbage, which is genuinely the same idea as several tsukemono, so the sourness and the residual crunch land in a reasonable place. The mismatch is that sauerkraut is much sourer and much less sweet than most Japanese pickles, and its cabbage aroma is stronger and more sulphurous. Rinsing tames both. Adding a pinch of sugar and a few drops of rice vinegar moves it closer still.

What is Tsukemono?

Tsukemono is Tsukemono is the umbrella term for Japanese pickles, meaning any vegetable preserved in salt, rice bran, vinegar, sake lees, miso or soy sauce, and served in a small pile beside rice rather than as a salad.

Cooking tips

The portion is the thing most people get wrong. Tsukemono is a seasoning for rice, not a salad, and a serving is two or three slices or about a tablespoon. A heaped bowl of pickles alongside a delicate meal overwhelms it, and the whole point of the pickle is to be the small sharp thing that makes the next mouthful of plain rice taste good again.
Salt, wait, squeeze. That three-step move is the entire technique behind asazuke and it is worth knowing, because it turns any crunchy vegetable into a passable Japanese pickle in half an hour. Roughly one teaspoon of salt per two cups of thinly sliced vegetable, twenty minutes, then squeeze out the water that has been drawn out. Cucumber, napa cabbage, daikon, turnip, carrot and kohlrabi all work.
Serve tsukemono cold and beside the rice, never on top of it and never warm. Heat destroys the crunch immediately and makes the pickle smell sulphurous. In a bento, keep it in its own compartment or on a lettuce leaf so its liquid does not run into the rice and make it soggy.
Know the words on the label. Asazuke means shallow-pickled and quick. Shiozuke is salt-pickled. Nukazuke is fermented in a rice bran bed. Kasuzuke uses sake lees and misozuke uses miso, both of which are savoury and mellow. Oshinko means new pickles and, in restaurants, usually means takuan specifically. Any of them satisfies a recipe that just says tsukemono.
A nukadoko, the rice bran bed that produces the most prized tsukemono, needs weeks of daily attention to establish and is not a solution to tonight's problem. If you want depth without the project, miso-pickled vegetables are far easier: bury sliced daikon, carrot or cucumber in miso in a container in the refrigerator for two to three days, then wipe them clean and slice.
If you ferment vegetables in salt brine at room temperature rather than making refrigerator pickles, follow a tested recipe, weigh the salt rather than guessing, keep the vegetables fully submerged, and refrigerate once they have soured. The National Center for Home Food Preservation publishes tested fermentation methods worth following as written.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just leave the tsukemono off the plate?

Yes, and a Japanese meal without pickles is still a meal. What you lose is the acid that cuts richness and resets your palate between bites of rice, which is why almost every teishoku set includes them. If you are skipping the pickles, put a wedge of lemon on the plate, add a few slices of pickled ginger from a sushi order, or serve a sharp vinegared cucumber salad instead.

What is the difference between tsukemono, oshinko and asazuke?

Tsukemono is the whole category, meaning any Japanese pickle. Asazuke is one type within it, the shallow quick pickle made in hours rather than weeks, which is what you should make at home. Oshinko literally means new pickles and functions as a near-synonym for asazuke, but in sushi restaurants it usually means takuan, the yellow pickled daikon, specifically. A recipe asking for any of the three will accept the others.

Are tsukemono fermented?

Some are and some are not, which is why the category is so broad. Nukazuke, made in a fermenting rice bran bed, and traditional long-brined pickles are genuine ferments with live bacteria and a complex funky aroma. Asazuke and vinegar-brined pickles such as most supermarket takuan are not fermented at all, just salted or soured. Both count as tsukemono and both do the same job at the table.

How long do homemade quick pickles keep?

Asazuke is meant to be eaten within a day or two and is best on the day you make it, since it goes progressively softer and saltier as it sits. Vinegar-brined versions keep two to three weeks refrigerated in a sealed jar. Use a clean dry utensil every time, and discard anything that has gone slimy, cloudy or smells rotten rather than sharply sour.

Which tsukemono is easiest to make if I have never made a pickle?

Salted cucumber, called kyuri no shiozuke. Slice a cucumber thin, toss it with about half a teaspoon of salt, leave it twenty minutes, squeeze out the water with your hands, and add a teaspoon of rice vinegar and a pinch of sugar. That is it. It costs almost nothing, takes no equipment, and is a legitimate tsukemono that will sit correctly beside any Japanese meal.

Related substitutes

More fermented substitutes

Tsukemono substitute

Other tsukemono substitutes

2Takuan (Japanese Pickled Daikon)

3Kimchi, in a Small Portion

4Gari or Beni Shoga (Pickled Ginger)

5Umeboshi (Salted Plum)

6Cornichons or Bread-and-Butter Pickles, Sliced Thin

7Sauerkraut, Rinsed and Drained