I was wondering what you people were talking about - having never heard of cilantro - but it reminded me of corriander and the way it tastes like stink bugs. Corriander is commonly found in Vietnamese food like pho and rolls.
Anyways, I wiki’ed it and it turns out coriander and cilantro ane one and the same.
To precis - to me cilantro tastes like stink bugs.
I didn’t recognize cilantro until maybe my mid twenties. I liked Mexican food and I’m sure I must have been exposed to it but it didn’t register as anything but maybe parsley to my taste buds. Then I started noticing some things had a unique taste - especially salsa. Took me awhile to identify what was different about Mexican food and by the time I realized what it was I was eating whole bowl-fulls of salsa just to get more cilantro taste.
Now I know what it is I grow my own whenever I can. I like the smell of it on my hands too.
I hate cilantro, but I hate it in moderation. I can hack it in salsa, but have to pick it laboriously off meats and fish.
I guess I’m missing out on the great eyeball-taco experience. Oh, well.
Actually, they’re the same plant, but different parts. Coriander is the seed, cilantro is the leaf.
My mom would occasionally cook with small amounts of (dried, IIRC) cilantro when I was growing up. I don’t really remember what it tasted like to me, but I remember liking it.
Then, in my early 20s when I moved here to Arizona, I ate at Rubio’s and I liked my burrito but something tasted really wrong with it at the same time. It was like every other bite or so I was getting punched in the face by a chemically mutated, drug-crazed space-gladiator. It took me a few more bad experiences to learn that it was fresh cilantro doing this to me. It’s in EVERYTHING here, even the fast food and the American food.
Futurama made a joke about everything being covered with cilantro in LA, and Phoenix is widely thought-of as an LA wannabe, so it stands to reason that the joke applies here, too. Hopefully it’s a fad food that goes away soon or at least restaurants wisen up enough to stop pre-mixing it with everything. As it is now you really can’t ask for your dish without it, because it’s already in all the sauces, meats, rices, etc.
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It drives me batty, but in Australia both parts of the plant are called coriander. I think it took me 2 years to stop doing the “cilantro-I-mean-coriander” thing.
Anyway, I don’t think anyone in Australia actually uses the seed of the plant - I haven’t seen it sold in spice shops or anything. shrug
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Ummm…did you even read my post, particularly this part:
I believe only in America is this distinction made (influenced by the Spanish word via Mexico.) Every other English-speaking country I’ve been to refers to the plant as coriander, and the seed as coriander seed.
I know you’re being facetious on the last part, but I’ll tell you that eyeball tacos aren’t particularly interesting. They’re not awful, they’re not spectacular, they’re merely meh. I’m sure I won’t be craving them anytime soon.
But cilantro-and-onion is the standard topping for any tacos here in Chicago, not just tacos de cabeza or tacos de ojos or anything.
I wonder if part of the cilantro/coriander distinction comes from the way the plant grows. The plant starts out with the tasty leafy tender branches that I know as cilantro. All too soon it bolts and becomes a stalky, narrow-leafed bitter thing that I tend to call coriander. Only the “coriander” stalks produce seeds (which are only good for growing more cilantro, imho). Look at the two types of leaves shown in Wikipedia. I replant the seeds and get 1.5 to 2 cycles per season (zone 6?).
I’m another one that acquired a taste for it. I worked on a market-garden farm my senior year of high school, and when I told my mom that we were growing cilantro, she screwed up her face and said that she hated cilantro, that it tasted just like soap. So I wasn’t prepared to like it, and sure enough, when the cilantro crop came in and I got to try some, I thought it had a gross chemical flavor to it. I avoided it for a long time.
But gradually I started to learn to cook Mexican (well, Mexicali) and Thai food, and you can’t really avoid cilantro in those cuisines. So I started adding just a little bit to the food to accustom myself to the flavor. Now I really enjoy it.
I’m certainly not saying everyone will have the same experience, but I’m a little skeptical of the genetic explanation. Maybe it’s true, but it may be true in the sense that many of our food likes and dislikes are genetically determined, and we all have a greater or lesser ability to overcome them.
All the descriptions folks apply to cilantro, by the way, mirror my own responses to arugula, right down to my inability to eat a salad that has a leaf of arugula in it.
Daniel
That’s odd – it’s an essential ingredient in Indian cooking, and is used in fairly large quantities.
So they’re not like big fat eggs, all white and blood-vessely and squirting aqueous humor with every bite?
Darn.
My first thought on reading this thread was: “What the hell is ‘cilantro’?”
Google tells me that you mean “coriander”, which brings me to my second thought: “How the hell can coriander taste of soap?”
I love it, it has a mild savoury taste that lingers on for a while in your mouth. I’m not wild about the smell it leaves on your hands, but I just don’t see how the flavour could be considered objectionable.
Asparagus, on the other hand, I do find to have a nasty flavour. I do eat it, because I like the texture, but it has to be with other nice stuff to mask the flavour a bit.
Guess it must be a genetic thing.
Try grilled aspergrass. First roll it in olive oil, dress to taste with cracked pepper and kosher salt. Then cover a bake sheet with foil. Bake for x minutes at y degrees (gotta look this up; haven’t done it in awhile) or until slightly charred and yummy. Does not particularly taste like aspergrass.
Recipe works for Brussels sprouts too!
Annnndd I also failed to notice that there was a second page, and that the coriander/cilantro thing has been done. Here in the UK we call both the leaves and the seeds “coriander”, anyway.
To me, the most plausible explaination I’ve heard (which may have no basis in fact) is that the soap cilantro taste works like a recessive gene.
Have zero recessive “soap taste” genes and it taste fine. You may like it or not like it based on your own personal tastes.
Have one recessive “soap taste” genes and you get a slight soapiness that may not be completely unpleasant. You know what the cilantro haters are talking about, but - like beer - you can learn to like it. I fall in this category. I can taste a soapiness - but it isn’t horrible. I wish Chipotle’s rice didn’t have cilantro in it, but it doesn’t stop me from eating it.
You have two recessive “soap taste” genes and there will never be any way to redeem cilantro. You will want to wash you mouth out with sand after eating it. You can’t imagine why people put this in food.
While this may not be the mechanism, it does seem to hold true as a model in my experience.
Aspergrass?
Aspergrass. Apply directly to the forehead.
Aspergrass. Apply directly to the forehead.
Aspergrass. Apply directly to the forehead.
I know I’ve had cilantro in various dishes before but couldn’t have told you what it tasted like so I picked some up this morning. All I get is a very mild new-mown grass flavor that I find on the pleasant side. Guess I’ll be using it from now on.
I don’t know if they’re related, or if there’s simply some overlap, but I’m both a supertaster and a soapy-cilantro hater.
More specifically, cilantro tastes like a nasty dish detergent with overtones of sweatsock stench and a hint of stinkbug juice. My opinion of it is not at all sweetened by the fact that far too many local restaurants overuse the wretched stuff. I’ve learned to enjoy my chips sans salsa where necessary.
So do you think you could acquire a taste for arugula? Would you want to?