The first time I encountered cilantro was an unforgettable experience. I was in Boston and I went to an unbelievable taqueria, the kind where they create everything before your eyes out of amazingly fresh ingredients. I asked to try it before they put it on my burrito. I loved it. When I got home I tried my hand at making a cilantro pesto and I was forever hooked.
The cilantro plant frequently reaches heights of up to 3 feet and has become very popular lately in Tex-Mex cooking. If you take a quick look at cilantro you might belive that it’s parsley, but its sweet and musky flavor can verify it is certainly unlike any parsley I know of. Cilantro is the name of the foliage, which has brilliant pale pink flowers, but the plant that comes from the seeds is called as coriander.
You can purchase your cilantro from your local nursery, but I love to begin mine from seeds. Because it’s an annual, you can be starting fresh with new plants each year. I begin mine in pots indoors on my kitchen windowsill when there’s still frost on the ground, and it usually takes about 7 to 10 days for the seeds to develop.
Cilantro herbs prefer moist, rich soil, so it is best to plant them in a raised bed after the weather gets sunny. If your climate gets too hot, remember that your cilantro does appreciate light shade in the heat of summer. Don’t forget that if your cilantro gets too much sun or too much heat it can go bitter.
It can take about nine weeks for your cilantro herb to go from seed to its brilliant white, pale pink or lavender flowers. You can definitely wait until the weather gets warmer and then plant your cilantro right in the ground. With sunny skies, warm temperatures and a little rain you’ll have cilantro sprouts in about two weeks.
You’ll get the strongest taste from your cilantro in the summer. Just clip off a few leaves and add the whole thing to your dish or dice it up and sprinkle on your tacos or Mexican chicken.
Remember to dry some cilantro for your fall, winter and spring dinners. The best way to make sure that the leaves can have a heavy concentration of oils is to cut them off right before the plant blooms. You can get nice outcomes if you dry this plant on a drying rack. When you dry the herb the taste is not as concentrated, so remember to use more dried cilantro than you would fresh.
You can harvest the coriander seed by drying them first—hanging them upside down in a paper bag will work best. Roll the seeds between your hands to release the seed from the pod. Next freeze the seeds for at least 48 hours before storing it in a cool, dark spot.
As coriander is a curry spice, so the seeds can be crushed into a powder and used in baked dinners, soups, stews and casseroles.
Good luck with your herb gardening. Be sure to let me know how your herb garden grows.
Here is more information on Herb Garden Plants. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Herb Gardens.
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