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hi
if your struggling to find unusual ingredients have you tried the online shops thai4uk or seasoned pioneers? both have excellent range of asian etc ingredients & hard to find stuff. i bought shrimp paste from thai4uk & have bought stuff from seasoned pioneers as well & found both to have reasonable delivery costs & stuff arrived quickly & well packaged......well worth trying
cheers

Hi MickeyT. Just out of curiousity, do you do a lot of Asian cooking? From my experience, shrimp paste is a VERY exotic ingredient and not for the light hearted.

Agreed todai, but as not everyone has an Asian store nearby and some people really will not be able to get the required ingredients. It is good that people can suggest an alternative that may not give the same result, but a nice one all the same. Has to be better than leaving it out altogether.

shrimp paste has a distinct odor and taste. By substituting with other ingr. you'll not have the same result as the original dish. Shrimp paste are sold in a lot of chinese stores( although it is a Southeast Asian ingr)

hi Val M, you could try Gentlemans Relish this is also a fishy paste but use sparingly (add then taste to req'd pref) it can be bought in Tesco's beside the sauces/pickles,it is in a small round white plastic container.More alternatives should be given,I agree.

Soy sauce and soy paste are good substitutes for fish sauce and shimp paste. This sort of qustion is quite often asked so a good tip on this site is to type whatever it is you are looking for into the search bar, top left, and select chat. Then you can see any answers or discussions already on the site.

Enjoy whatever it is you are cooking.