I absolutely love cilantro, but then again I have a marvelously sophisticated palate and a gustatory open-mindedness that allows me to enjoy most flavors, even those from societies I am not genetically or culturally predisposed to be fond of. Those of who you dislike cilantro and feel perhaps a bit ashamed of that fact are in luck: Science says there may be a hereditary reason for your aversion.
The senses of smell and taste evolved to evoke strong emotions... because they were critical to finding food and mates and avoiding poisons and predators. When we taste a food, the brain searches its memory to find a pattern from past experience that the flavor belongs to. Then it uses that pattern to create a perception of flavor, including an evaluation of its desirability.So, really, it's not that you're an unrefined hick, it's more that your genes are lacking in culture. The article suggests several options by which you can allow yourself to appreciate the subtle majesty of cilantro, but it seems like a lot of work and we know you'd be much happier sticking to regular parsley, right? I wouldn't trouble yourself too much about it, you boorish culinary xenophobe.If the flavor doesn't fit a familiar food experience, and instead fits into a pattern that involves chemical cleaning agents and dirt, or crawly insects, then the brain highlights the mismatch and the potential threat to our safety. We react strongly and throw the offending ingredient on the floor where it belongs.
If you hate cilantro, you hate Mexicans.
Ouch.
I guess now I hate cilantro.
My husband & his Mexican dad both hate cilantro. Self loathing?
Its called Coriander
Unless you live in a closer proximity to Mexico. The world has many different languages with different words for things!
Seeds are coriander; leaves are cilantro. USA USA!
Of course I hate cilantro. It killed my sister.
I still can't get used to calling black pepper "pepper of color".
Pepper lover.
Didn't I just catch you violating a watermelon?
That watermelon was asking for it by dressing provocatively and reading Jezebel. It deserved a good rape.
I once paid pepper a nickel to bust up a chiffarobe.
Atticus Finch was a pepper lover just like you!
Atticus Finch shot a rabid dog in the street and blamed pepper.
hahahahhhhahahhahaa!
Nice one scrolly!
They used to put so much cilantro in the tom kha gai at the thai restaurant I worked at in college. It was like coconut bath water, after you got out of the tub. But I ate it anyway. Soap won't kill you. Now that I know it tasted like bug-infested bedclothes I'm more wary.
I find that bug-infested bedclothes add a little something extra to just about any dish.
That's how the Black Death got started! I have a good reason for not liking cilantro.
I only just started liking cilantro this year. I don't know what happened but I suddenly went from absolutely hating it to it now being one of my absolutely favorite smells/flavors.
Same thing happened with asparagus - though the smelly pee still gets to me. Where is the scientific article about why asparagus makes your pee smell funny?
Pee smeller.
@scroll_lock: I bet shorty constantly smells his fingers too.
He'd rather smell a Jezebel reader's.
Damn you both, it's hard to ignore!
web-based surveys of people who paid to use their genomes for social networking (http://www.ashg.org/2009meeting/abstracts/fulltext/f10782.htm)
may have solved the old-timey scientific confusion (http://sciencevsromance.net/post/63622924/there-exists-a-surprising-level-of-controversy-and): everyone's asparagus pee smells funny but not everyone can smell it.
Also, I'm a girl.
Ladies don't smell pee and ascribe culinary attributes to it, guy.
Pee or fingers? Cause the Jezebel pee is just going to be Ramen Noodles with the faint scent of misplaced indignation.
Don't forgot the faintest whiff of cellulite-riddled angst about still being unmarried at 27.
Sorry I just got distracted by bar graphs and hereditary pee studies.
Smell my finger scrolly!
MMMMM.Smells like Teen Spirit.
Yeah I was at shorty's house last night and we were watching Twilight. Rode my moped over there so my Mom didn't have to drop me off.
You forgot your skateboard and bottle of Axe but shorty said you can pick them up after band practice.
My bass playing is really coming along. I almost have Heart Shaped Box completely memorized. I'm gonna play outside shorty's window one night when her parents aren't home and then give her a rose from the gas station. If that doesn't get me some then I don't know what will.
Make sure the gas station doesn't stiff you by selling you a rose that doesn't have a tiny fuzzy teddy bear attached to it. It's the bear that's the panty-dropper.
Bitches recognize the bear, yo. I already got a magnum condom in my wallet for when I getz some.
Don't forget the 2 x 4 strapped to your ass so you don't fall in.
www.nocilantro.com
http://nomexicanasianorindianfoodever.com
I pity those who can't enjoy half of the world's cuisines.
Alas, I am married to such a person. Going out to dinner is a crushing bore.
Oh, god, if I couldn't halve a banh mi with a partner, I would have a whole in my heart.
LOLS SIC
Great, now someone explain to me what "the bug family of insects" is.
Those insects that are not Steve Buscemi.
Steve Buscemi would like to reply were he not currently being force fed to a woodchipper.
Steve had to give his gun to his pastor. You know, in case he got the "gloomies" again.
And by "give his gun" you mean he pistol whipped him. That's enough to ward off those ol' "gloomies".
Beating your pastor too much can really hairy up your psalms.
The sneak shall inherit the mirth.
I just hate cilantro because it owes me $50 and has stopped taking my calls.
Cilantro's a well-known sponger amongst herbs. I've always been parsley to him though.
It's high thyme I cut him off for good.
Be careful, I heard he found two peanuts walking down a dark street one night and one was a salted.
I can't tell you where to buy soy sauce tonight, but I can shoyu tamari.
I have always relied on you as my sage, scrolly. You are such a wise cumin.
You should always have your parent purchase alcohol for you- they'd never cardamom.
Be careful. Too much soy sauce has been shown to cause turmerics in rats.
Yeah, but my sister Rosemary (the Ginger) will probably call the cops on us. She don't put up with no chive.
I'm sorrel to hear that.
My poppy doesn't have money for alcohol anyway, he lost his job and without a celery we got nutmeg.
So scroll, wasabi with you lately?
I always liked your poppy- seemed like a tarragon of virtue.
Yeah but all that virtue makes for a real vanilla existence. My mother on the other hand, hasn't a caraway in the world.
I find vanilla is a great dill underrated.
If I were you, STC, I would listen to your elderflower, throw you caraway and go fennel some hops.
I guess I shouldn't call poopy "vanilla," he pulled a few capers in his day.
Look res, don't make me mace you.
Keep calling him "poopy" and he'll wash your mouth out with coriander for using such a nasty turd to describe him.
FeUnGreek.
Whoops! Sorry poppy! It's hard to type. My office is so chili.
Res, that greek is a real asshole. I amchur of it.
All right, I gotta go. I got anise coming over.
He certainly gives a lot of sassafras but his jokes are so savory.
I always suspected that Greek was a limey.
I thought this wasn't news? My wife gets the bad cilantro taste, and like years ago she told me it was a hereditary thing.
OH MY GOD. SHE'S FROM THE FUTURE.
Lucky guess?
It's bizarre how quickly and offhandedly the "curious cook" dismisses the part where some people perceive the cilantro taste as repulsive due to their genetics and just pushed forward with trying to get everyone to just give it another shot in pesto form.
Naw, actually her mom gets the bad taste too, so I think just less-than-rigorous application of the scientific method.
I once dated a guy who thought cilantro tasted 'soapy' and it would thrill me to no end when we'd go out for Indian food or whatever and he'd forget to ask for them to hold the cilantro on his order. He was too much of a wuss to send stuff back.
I LOVE CILANTRO. I will eat it plain, sucking on the stems.
I, and everyone in my family, like cilantro so much that we also eat it plain! (Also, this clinches that Balk is the Perfect Man For Me!)
Guess we all don't have the happy memories of hand lotion that you do, Balk.
!!
Disliking cilantro is the purest form of racism left. There's something noble in that.
I can't tell cilantro apart from parsley! Neither offend me but I never could understand cilantro hate if you don't also hate parsley.
I would love to see Julia Child cluck in dismay and throw cilantro on the floor.
But she's dead.
I'd like to see Emeril bend Julia over his Viking.
BAM! etc.
I like cilantro in small doses. But like at some Asian places they're like DO YOU WANT SOME SOUP WITH YOUR CILANTRO. AM I RIGHT?
You are right. I prefer to add my cilantro at will, suckas. This is why me and pho are BFFs.
Yes, we used to always ask when I was a waitress at a thai restaurant. Some people really get angry.
I often tell people, "it's not that you don't like the taste of saffron, it's just that you are poor bastard."
You should try to curry some favor with them res, dots all I am saying.
Hey, you are what you eat, and I love jerk.
I love you res. You sexy litigatin' mofo.
I bet you're making a mint out there.
Have some salmon with your soap. No, but seriously for cilantro lovers this is so good and easy.
Handful of cilantro (rinsed) stems and all.
Juice of one lime
Garlic cloves 2-3
Soy sauce (this is your salt)
Sesame seed oil (a little goes a long way)
Blend, pulse, mash, chop, destroy. But keep it be chunky-like.
Spread over a large salmon fillet... skin side down, etc.
Broil for about 12 minutes. Die from the yumminess.
OK, I saw there were 50+ comments on a post about CILANTRO so I had to see what the eff was up. And now that I'm here... I still don't know, but I would like some of what you guys are smoking. Or eating. Maybe I need to go make some tacos?
Cilantro sandwiches.
(whispery)
I hope you share the fajita marinade recipe before my memorial day party ..
Oh don't worry, mathnet and I will pester him relentlessly until he posts it. Soothsayer sooths: "Beware the Cinco of De Mayo."
You guys are our all too thankless street team. If I could, I would send you an engraved card, periodically but on a schedule.
Mostly I've just been bereft since the "Men Take Breakups etc." post went up because the pestering, oh the sweet, sweet pestering...
What if all you eat is cilantro?
I can't wait to read about the love of limburger cheese and its related "hereditary" antecedents. I'll take tortilla soup with a ton of cilantro any day over anything like limburger cheese-- even in the dark.
I will never forget the first time I had cilantro. I was eating a foil-wrapped burrito, and the taste was so alien and baffling to me that I honestly thought I had accidentally eaten some of the tinfoil.
It has not grown on me at all. Fuck you, cilantro.
Correspondingly, you're one of the most European-looking people on Earth. Don't blame the cilantro, blame your genes!
Fennel, fennel is the Evil One.
Goons, I felt passionately this way until I met an onion tart recipe that highlights fennel. It is balanced (one could say 'mitigated') by super-caramelized onions, dijon mustard, and a strong cheese .. mmm.
Fennel makes me want to scratch my tongue right out of my mouth.
My mother sent me a case of Tom's of Maine toothpaste because she knows I lurves it (Peppermint, thank you) and when I opened it I had a case of FENNEL TOOTHPASTE.
Naturally, being Jewish and a Yankee, I couldn't just throw it out (!), so I had to suffer through MONTHS of brushing my teeth morning and night with fennel.
It sealed the deal in terms of my blatant disregard of that particular flavor.
Hmmmmmm. This tart isn't good enough to undo that degree of trauma. Also? It is just as good without the fennel!
Being both an only child and a terrible bitch, I would have sent the package back to my mother with a scathing note saying, "STOP TRYING TO PUSH YOUR WEIRD FLAVORS ON ME, MOMMY."
You're an only child too, dear? We were siblings in a past life in a Bronte novel.
this is a whispery reply because we've dicussed this already and I now want you to go get your head checked out again, okay puss?
Awww, thanks - on the mend! Slowly but surely.
But seriously my short term memory right now, not so hot!
Fennel is the devil's work, because it has the stench of licorice about it.
But if it is freshly shaved, razor-thin, in a well-balanced salad, all is forgiven.
I got the I hate cilantro thing. I'm not proud of it, though geneticists agree it's part of the big penis gene. Win some, lose some.
Cilantro causes cancer of the feet. Stay away from it, please. It's already too expensive unless you go to an Asian market.
looks like this site is back up again - it's where all the boorish culinary xenophobes hang out with each other:
http://www.ihatecilantro.com