Portioning cilantro at the end for the soap-taste crowd
Ok so we've got two salsas down, tomatillo and the red one from your toasted chiles, and both of em probably have cilantro somewhere in the mix already. This lesson isn't a new salsa. It's a fix for a problem I run into at my own table every single time I cook.
Here's the thing: some people genuinely taste soap when they eat cilantro. It's not them being picky, it's a real genetic thing, a smell receptor deal, and Mckenzie's one of em. I married a woman who thinks my roasted red salsa tastes like dish soap and I had to figure out how to live with that.
Why you dont just leave it out
You could just skip cilantro entirely and never deal with this. Some people do that. But cilantro's doing real work in a lot of these salsas, it's not just decoration on top, so I'd rather build a system where the people who love it get it and the people who dont, dont. That means blending it into the salsa itself is the wrong move if you've got any soap-tasters coming to dinner. Once it's blended in, it's in for everybody. No opting out.
So the fix is dead simple. You portion the cilantro at the end, off to the side, and let people add it themselves.
How I actually do it
- Make your salsa the way we already covered, minus the cilantro. If a recipe says blend cilantro in with everything else, hold it back.
- Rough chop a small bowl of it separate. Doesn't need to be fine, just chopped enough it's easy to sprinkle. Maybe a half cup for a group of eight, give or take, you can always chop more.
- Set it out next to the salsa in its own little dish with a spoon. Not mixed in. Just sitting there.
- Let people spoon it on their own plate, their own bowl, whatever. Everybody gets the salsa they actually want.
That's it. Thats the whole technique. It took me embarrassingly long to land on something this obvious.
The toasting lesson that applies here too
This connects to something I learned on my mission, actually, from the branch dad in Kyiv who taught me the al pastor stuff in the first place. He also showed me how he toasted his dried chiles, and the rule was you toast em just until they smell awake. Like the second they start smelling toasty and alive, you pull em. Go past that and they go bitter fast, like flipping a switch.
I didn't listen close enough the first time I tried it on my own. Burned a whole batch of guajillos to bitter black, had to toss the pan out it smelled so bad, ended up doing a DI run for a new one because I was too embarrassed to keep using the ruined one in my own kitchen. Cheap pan, wasnt a big deal money-wise, but it stuck with me.
What that has to do with cilantro is this: both of these are about restraint at the exact right moment. Chiles, you pull em the second they smell right, not later. Cilantro, you hold it back the second you know you've got mixed tastes at the table, not blend it in and hope for the best. Same instinct, different ingredient. Know when to stop and separate something out before it's too late to undo.
A note on the stems
Dont throw the stems out automatically. The tender upper stems have basically the same flavor as the leaves, just a little more crunch, and chopping em in with the leaves is fine. It's really just the thick woody bottom stems you want out. I used to trim way more off than I needed to before I realized that.
My opinion on this, while we're here
Salsa needs seasoning same as the meat does, we covered that already, and cilantro's kind of the same conversation. People treat herbs and garnishes like they're optional flourishes that dont matter much either way. They matter. A salsa with the cilantro built in tastes different than the same salsa with it on the side, even if it's the same amount of cilantro total. Blended in, it's part of the sauce. Sprinkled on top, it's fresh and sharp and hits you first. Both are good. Just know which one you're making and who's eating it.
Before next time: grab a small bunch of cilantro at the store and practice separating the tender stems from the woody ones, just so you're fast at it when we're all working the stations together.