CILANTRO: Still Full Of Flavor Even AFTER It Bolts. How To Keep Picking & Using It ALL Season Long

There's one herb that I make sure to grow every single season; it's cilantro or is it coriander?
We love it! It has such a refreshing flavour and always adds a great taste to many of our recipes.

The problem with cilantro is that it hates hot weather and that will trigger the plant to bolt to seed. But did you know that even after bolting, it can still offer tons of flavour ALL season long? I’m going to show you how…

Most gardeners enjoy growing this herb usually with a goal of just using the leaves but after the plant goes to seed we can collect those and use them as a spice as well. The fresh leaves and the dried seeds have different flavours and uses in cooking.

In most of North America we call the plant cilantro and just the dried seeds as coriander. This is where many people get confused because most of the world doesn't even use the word cilantro at all. Instead they refer to the whole plant as coriander and ask for coriander seeds when they just want the spice.

It grows best in cool weather so it's a good one to plant in the early spring and also in the fall. It's very easy to start growing. In fact, if you grew it last year then you're pretty well guaranteed to have another crop this year without even trying. It self seeds so easily.

Although it's an easy plant to start, it changes in hot weather. It gets difficult to keep growing lush and full all summer long. Usually what happens it'll be growing so well in the spring then we'll have a period of summer heat and that triggers the plant to switch over to its bolting stage. At that point it starts preparing to make seed. You’ll know when it's starting to bolt when it begins to switch from a thick and lush compact plant to one that is tall and gangly. Even the leaves start to change.

The new ones that form are no longer large and full. They now start to get very sparse and spindly. They still have that same flavour we want but it's difficult now to pick enough to even make it worthwhile.

At this point many gardeners will decide to just toss the plant on the compost pile and I understand but I’m telling you don't do that. The plant can still provide us tons of flavour. We actually love using it when it reaches this stage because if you let the plant continue to bolt it'll start to produce loads of delicate small white flowers and soon these will lead to hundreds of green berries. These are what we're waiting for.

We can pick those berries green and use them in the kitchen. They have that same leaf flavour and I think it's even more concentrated. In some recipes we like using it instead of the leaves as the flavour is much more intense and isn't lost as much when you cook it.

We'll add the crushed berries to whatever we're cooking and sometimes even add the whole berries themselves.

When you bite into them you get a rush of that fresh flavour.

Another huge benefit with these berries is that you can keep them in the fridge and have that fresh taste available for quite a while.

Cover them with olive oil to keep them from drying out it and they will keep in a sealed container in the fridge for a few weeks. The oil will also absorb any flavour that is given off by the berries. Just take a spoon to add what you want and then put the jar back in the fridge.

If you see that you have a lot of berries on the plants and you don't want them all to mature into coriander seeds I’d recommend harvesting as many as you can while they're still green, add the oil, but store them in the freezer so you can enjoy their taste all winter long.

Finally, you may not realize it but the entire plant is edible everything from the flowers down to even the root itself and it all has that same flavour as the leaves to different degrees. So once it's bolted, if you've already picked all the sparse leaves you can and the berries haven't quite formed yet, by all means start using some of the flowers. They have a ton of flavour as well.

At the end of the season the entire plant will turn brown. The seeds will be almost dry and probably some have already begun falling off. Before they all spread on the ground make sure to carefully pick the entire plant and let it finish drying out in your garage. You'll be able to use all those seeds as a spice in the kitchen as well as for planting your crop next season.

Thanks for watching and when you garden well you'll always eat well!