How to Store Cilantro So It Lasts More Than Two Days

Cilantro goes from fresh to slime faster than almost any other herb, and the reason is structural: the leaves are thin, the surface area is high, and the whole plant is mostly water.

Two things kill it in a fridge — losing water from the leaves, and surface moisture sitting on them. The storage method that works addresses both at once.

Why it wilts so fast

A cut stem keeps transpiring — losing water from the leaves — but has nothing to draw from. Within hours the leaves go limp.

Meanwhile, any water sitting on the leaves encourages bacterial breakdown, and cilantro’s thin leaf tissue collapses quickly once that starts. Hence the two rules that look contradictory and are not: water at the stems, dry at the leaves.

The jar method

1. Do not wash it yet.
2. Trim half an inch off the stem ends, at an angle. This reopens the vascular tissue, exactly as for cut flowers.
3. Stand the bunch in a jar with an inch or two of cool water, leaves clear of the water.
4. Cover loosely with a plastic bag over the top — this raises humidity around the leaves so they lose less water, without trapping condensation against them.
5. Refrigerate.
6. Change the water every two or three days, retrimming the stems each time.

Expect two to three weeks. The same method works for parsley, dill and mint.

The alternative: the damp towel roll

If a jar will not fit in your fridge, wrap the unwashed bunch loosely in a barely damp kitchen towel and put it in a partly open bag or container.

Not as good — expect around a week — but far better than the bag it came in.

Freezing

The right answer for a glut, and the only preservation method that keeps cilantro tasting like cilantro.

• Chop it — stems included, they carry plenty of flavour.
• Pack into an ice cube tray and top with olive oil (better for cooking) or water (better for soups and stews).
• Freeze, then transfer the cubes to a bag.

Around six months. The texture is completely destroyed, so this is a cooking ingredient rather than a garnish — but the cubes go straight from freezer into a hot pan, which is genuinely convenient.

Cilantro pesto or chutney freezes even better, and is worth making if you have a large harvest.

Why not to dry it

Cilantro’s flavour comes from volatile aromatic compounds — they evaporate along with the water. Dried cilantro leaf smells faintly of hay and tastes of very little, which is why it is one of the few herbs almost never sold dried.

Dry the seed instead. Let some plants bolt and set seed, cut the heads when brown, and dry them fully. Coriander seed is a completely different flavour — warm, citrusy, nutty — and it keeps its character for a year or more.

That turns bolting from a failure into a second crop.

Harvesting so the plant keeps going

Cut outer stems at the base, not across the top. New growth comes from the centre of the plant, so shearing the top removes the youngest leaves and leaves the oldest.

Never take more than about a third at once.

Sow every two or three weeks. Cilantro is a cool-season annual that bolts as soon as heat and long days arrive, and no amount of care prevents it — succession sowing is the only real answer. Slow-bolting varieties such as Calypso and Santo help, and part shade in summer helps more.

Once the tall central flower stalk appears, leaf production is effectively finished. Let it flower — the blooms are excellent for hoverflies and predatory wasps — and collect the seed.