Oh, and as for why make this vote public, why not?
The only reason I’d ever use the private option would be because the vote can be potentially embarrassing. With cilantro, what’s to be ashamed of? I feel like I know a lot of the posters here, even if I don’t interact with many of them, and it’s cool to see their usernames show up in different camps. Besides, next DopeFest I go to, someone can check the list and make sure not to make their dish with cilantro if I’m showing up. 
I almost never use it for actual cooking, but we use heaps of it whenever we make tacos (or any other shape of Mexican food). I also make a fabulous cilantro pesto.
Hey, like I said, it’s no big deal to me whether cilantro-haters are that way because of genetic defects*, being a fussy eater or general weeniness. I have a degree of vague pity for people with restricted sensate enjoyment, but that’s about it. It’s not like I’m crazy about the herb and put it in everything - spaghetti, stew, morning coffee, toothpaste etc.
However, the cilantro thing is getting to be like the business with rare steak eaters - any preference other than theirs must be endlessly critiqued and derided.
If you don’t like cilantro, don’t eat it. Lobby the Mexican embassy to keep it out of Mexican food, or eat something else. Problem solved.
More salsa for me. 
*Having an anti-cilantro gene (assuming one exists) isn’t of much practical importance. There are more important genetically determined sensory characteristics, such as one that could conceivably be important in my work - the ability to detect the odor of cyanide. I’ve never smelt it when doing an autopsy on somebody so I can’t say that any patient I’ve worked on has been poisoned. Then again, how would I know, not having sniffed the real thing in a tube? The potential ramifications are staggering.
If I eat a big bunch of coriander* on its own I can sort of detect a hint of something soapy, maybe, but not really in an unpleasant way. I love it in all sorts of things - Mexican, and of course Thai green curry.
*I’m British so that’s what we call both the leaves and the seeds. Question for the soap brigade - do coriander seeds also taste nasty to you bunch of freakos?
I despise cilantro, but I don’t think it tastes like soap. Rancid dishwater, as someone mentioned, comes closer. And so does garbage.
I’ve discovered that the absolute worst is raw cilantro stems. I can handle a small amount of cooked cilantro leaves in a dish. I really hate but will probably still eat food that has a very small amount of raw cilantro leaves in it. But I will not eat anything with raw cilantro stems. One time at a great Vietnamese restaurant, I forgot to ask for my usual tofu bun (noodle salad) without cilantro. When the server brought it out, I almost cried. I spent a good 15 minutes trying to pick out all the cilantro leaves and stems, took a couple bites, and pushed the plate away. It’s a good way to ruin food.
Hmmm…
We like to grow our own, so that its supper fresh. When I go out to harvest or mess with the plants, I like to joke that one could get high off the stuff because of the buzz I get by heavily breathing the fumes. Maybe thats not a buzz, maybe its my blood pressure dropping?
If it makes you feel any better, cilantro stems are not approved of by Cook’s Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen* either. They did taste-tests with cilantro leaves with or without stems, and the same with Italian parsley. Their results were - yes to stems on the parsley, no to cilantro stems!
Why, yes it is getting to the point endless critique and derision–by the people on your end of the spectrum, yourself included. I mean, really. Defects? Fussiness? Weeniness? If a genetic basis for not liking cilantro exists? If you don’t care one way or the other whether we like cilantro or not, why the negative commentary about us as human beings? And what’s with chastising us about critiquing the way it tastes to us in a thread specifically for the purpose of discussing the range of ways people perceive that taste? It’s not like we’re calling anybody who likes cilantro names, we’re just talking about the taste of the herb.
Colophon, coriander is as nasty as cilantro, but in a somewhat different way. It tastes…more generally rotten, I guess, like the smell if you forget to empty a trashcan before going away for a few days, whereas fresh cilantro tastes more like the smell when you wash that trashcan out–mostly detergent, but still with the garbage undertones.
As a matter of idle curiosity, do any of the other cilantro-haters also hate asparagus? I’ve always hated the stuff and thought it tasted the way a liver-failure dog’s urine smells, but I’ve never run across anyone else who perceives it that way. But I’ve also never run across another soap taster IRL either–I sort of wonder if the two are somehow related.
It’s a genentic dominant/recessive thing. It’s like blue/green eyes is a recessive thing and others are a dominate thing. Red hair: Recessive. Brown hair: Dominant.
Being able to curl your tongue: Dominant Not being able to: Recessive.
There’s many things on this list (as we learned in Biology) even things as far as if your earwax is more liquidy and moist or more crumbley and thick or if you have knobby looking knees.
Cilantro isn’t the only thing on this list…there is something called PTC that some people, apparently (I’m one of them), can’t taste.
Cilantro is like that, only instead of not being able to taste it, it tastes very vile and disgusting to those few. It’s something either your genentics/traits allow you to taste or not. It’s nothing like being damned or damaged. 
It’s pure, roll of the dice, random genetics. It would be like calling someone with red hair damned or damaged.
Sorry for the minor hijack.
I’ve never tasted Cilantro so I have no idea what it tastes like to me.
Jackmanni, I’m not critiquing those who love cilantro at all… It’s clear to me and a lot of others there’s something unusual going on with that particular herb. If anything, I ask for some understanding when I recoil while trying your salsa, or if I refuse to go to Chipotle because they put cilantro in literally everything.
And if it is genetics, it doesn’t have to have a practical usage, let alone be practical for your line of work. A tad arrogant. It’s just something that effects those of us who taste soap, can cause awkward social/dining situations for us. But, right, I’m just being a picky eater. :rolleyes:
Im a taster … but I am also nto a sweet addict, I like salt,vinegar/bitter so the residue you get in broccoli/cabbagy stuff is ok as long as it isnt overwhelming.
No implication of a lack of humanity was intended. You may have other redeemable human features. 
Apart from the dopeyness of the push poll that’s the basis of this thread, the only conceivable impact on me from cilantro-weenies is the potential for enough squalling to affect the Mexican restaurant dishes that I like*, based on restaurant owners’ desire not to offend.
Bland Mexican food would be a plague.
*it’d be as if a small minority decided that curry tasted icky, therefore Indian restaurants should not use it in their dishes.
It gets the name from the Greek Koriandron meaning a bed-bug or a cockroach, which has to be saying something! The first time I came across the leaves, the first thing I thought of was very old sump oil and the smell seemed to stick to my fingers all day no matter how much I washed. I’m sure the stuff is addictive because once I started using it, I found myself adding it to everything in ever larger quantities. It seems to produce the same kind of response in people as garlic, either absolute loathing or once addicted, can’t get enough of it.
Tastes horrible to me - oddly enough, I very much like the taste of the (coriander) seeds…
I’m firmly in the “it tastes like burnt Ivory soap flakes to me” camp. It also irritates the inside of my mouth/tongue. It’s a stupid thing to get all het up about, but it annoys me when people imply that I’m being childish or my tastes are somehow not refined enough to appreciate the wonder that is cilantro. I’m sure it’s a wonderful taste, IF IT DOESN’T TASTE LIKE BURNED SOAP TO YOU. It’s not that I dislike the taste, or am being fussy, it’s that my genetic makeup is such that I am incapable of tasting it the way “most” other people taste it. A very small amount of cilantro, I can work around. Anything more than about a tablespoon, or mixed into my food, and the entire dish is ruined just as much as if someone stirred a box of detergent into it.
According to Jackmanni, you’re wrong and so am I and a million other people. But only because he’s terrified it’ll change the face of Mexican Food. How dare us and our nefarious plans to destroy an entire culture’s cuisine! We won’t stop until everything has been replaced by cauliflower and white rice! Oh, and also, you’re a weenie. His words.
I don’t let them put rice in my burrito (more because rice in a burrito is a waste of calories) and the small amount in the salsa doesn’t bother me too much. I will say that as I’ve gotten older, my tolerance for cilantro has increased – I can usually pick it out without the whole dish being ruined. When I was younger it was like soap-flavored death.
That said, the last time I visited my brother he made a quart of salsa out of his garden, but in exchange for me walking his dog while he cooked dinner, he made me my own little bowl of Special Snowflake Salsa, with no cilantro. Yummmmmm. Thanks bro!!
My sister says that it doesn’t quite taste like soap to her, but more like toothpaste.
Yeah, despite my hyperventilating up thread, I’ve gotten so I can tolerate small quantities of it. It still tastes like soap, mind you, but I love Mexican and Indian food, so I learned to tolerate it. I order “no cilantro” whenever possible, but they often forget and I just scrape it off the top. That’s the one saving grace, it’s often just on top and can be removed without ruining the whole dish.
I love cilantro and always use it in Chinese/Indian/Mexican/Thai cooking, all of which I love. Although I don’t like it quite as much as when I was new to it, when it was sheer bliss and sent me into ecstasy, now I merely like it a lot. I can’t imagine homemade Thai green curry or freshly hand-chopped pico de gallo without it. But I’m conscious of some people’s issues around it and when I cook for someone always ask first if they’re OK with it.
About the word being derived from Spanish: the actual Spanish name for the plant is culantro. I guess the spelling “cilantro” must have originated from a typo, since “i” is next to “u” on the keyboard, and it wasn’t caught by the editor who was ignorant of Spanish. Or something.
The Goya brand sells jars of puréed cilantro as a base used in cooking. But I can’t see the use of it for the life of me. It’s a snotgreen-(as James Joyce would say)-colored slime, and it has no flavor. Cilantro loses its flavor quickly when cooked, and I only add it raw to most dishes after the cooking is done to preserve the full impact of that unique deliciousness.