I tried. I really did. For years and years I accepted it, welcoming it into my diet, eating it whenever it found its way on to my plate, and deliberately not specifying “No cilantro” when I ordered in Thai and burrito places. I noticed the flavour when it was in my mouth, and tried to tell myself that the only reason I didn’t like it was because I had convinced myself that I don’t like it, so I should keep an open mind. I told myself that it was an acquired taste and if I kept eating it as if I enjoyed it, eventually I would. I told myself I liked it. I pretended to like it. It comes in some of my favourite dishes (Thai basil rice, I’m looking at you), so it was surrounded by goodness, so it was easy to deny to myself the fact that it is indeed gross.
Well, I’ve had it. Yesterday I had a burrito for which I specified NO CILANTRO and it was the best damn burrito I’ve had in years, because I wasn’t constantly being distracted by that nasty taste. Here I sit, today, with a plate of yummy Thai basil rice, and I am picking the diced cilantro out of it.
Fucking Cilantro. I give up on you. I acquired a taste for marmite and olives and dulse and all kinds of disgusting things so I don’t know why you are forsaking me. Cilantro, you can join cheap scotch and double-salted licorice and creamed corn and (ugh) mushy peas on the shelf of “stuff I am never going to intentionally put in my mouth ever again.” You suck.
Awwww. I’m the exact opposite – I must add cilantro to everything. My sandwiches, my spaghetti. If it’s got tomatos, it must have cilantro. If it doesn’t have tomatos, it’s still more than likely going to get cilantro =)
I’m with you. No love for the cilantro at Kasa Kalhoun. Maybe it’s that they completely over-do it at restaurants, but I find it overwhelming and exceedingly unpleasant.
Welcome home, cowgirl. We, your fellow cilantro-haters, have been considering an intervention, but you have found the strength to shed your self-torment on your own.
It seems almost impossible to get across to the cilantro lovers that the stuff doesn’t taste the same to us. It’s not that we dislike the flavor they like, it’s that they can’t perceive the vileness that lurks in every leaf and twig of cilantro. It tastes like anti-food. You might as well try to acquire a taste for cheap dish soap and dirty sweatsocks.
I’m a cilantro lover who used to be a hater, but i totally support you in your refusal to eat it. Try everything once, maybe twice, but then you’ve got to face facts. Plus with cilantro you can bring up the whole genetic thing if anyone calls you picky.
I hadn’t encountered cilantro until I went to work in Costa Rica. I realized very soon that whenever I ate dishes with that soapy-tasting cousin of parsley I’d get dizzy. My coworkers thought I was just being a food coward.
Then one of the guides in Barrahonda told us that cilantro is “very good for the heart.”
Me: wait a minute… “good for the heart” as in “lowers blood pressure”?
Him: yes, exactly!
Me: &()/! OK, that explains why it makes me dizzy - I have low blood pressure! :smack:
No, I don’t take cilantro. Anybody who feeds me cilantro better be willing to bring me to the ER.
I was a lonely voice in a sea of unholy mutants who defended the vile stuff, and actually promoted its use.
But slowly the righteous and true are gaining numbers and strength, and I look forward to the day when we wipe that foul, noxious, personification of evil and ass from our planet.
That makes perfect sense to this cilantro liker. I probably wouldn’t like it if it tasted like soap to me. But I don’t have that genetic trait, so it doesn’t.
There could be a genetic reason I hate this stuff?!?!?!?!?! WOW!!!
I’m a pretty unfussy eater … but cilantro/coriander is the one thing, above all things, that I just can’t stand! I don’t mind curries etc made with the dried seeds (but only as a small flavour amongst other flavours) … but those awful green leaves … ick ick ick!
Now at least I can tell friends why I might be so adverse to it!
Eh, don’t feel bad. I’m convinced there’s a genetic component involved- cilantro has some chemical which you (and other cilantrophobes) can taste, which the rest of us can’t taste. That would explain the “soap” flavor that you guys complain about, that we can’t taste.
Me, I think cilantro is a wonderful flavoring- the only way to describe it is “fresh and green”. There’s no hint of soapiness in it for me. I seriously think that cilantro would be great in everything- even ice cream.
However, I can’t stand celery. To me, celery is like someone dragging their fingernails down a chalkboard- I honestly can’t understand how anyone can eat the stuff. Most of my friends, however, say they can’t really taste celery at all.
I don’t feel one way or the other about cilantro (although the genetic element is fascinating!), but Lightnin’, I’m with you on celery. Especially raw celery. Cooked celery is tolerable.