I can’t tell you how much I adore cilantro. I especially like when they have the 4/1.00 sales at my local grocery–I buy it every time only to look for it a few days later and find that the leaves have turned to icky black slime, which means I have to pick through it all and salvage what I can. Not fun for a busy mom. I have been told over the years that there is a way to preserve it for up to two weeks in your fridge, only for some reason I never tried it.
I should stop here and let you know that I so enjoy cilantro….so much so that I’ve tried to grow it practically every year for the past 10 or so years with no luck. Enter: the winter garden. Because we had so much rain over the winter, the weeds grew like crazy. Guess what I found under all the weeds? Cilantro bunches! Yeah!
So back to the instructions on how to preserve it for two weeks. I got these instructions from the Simply Recipes article “How to Store Parsley, Cilantro and Other Fresh Herbs”. I’m sharing my version of the instructions, the way I do this.
METHOD
1 With my kitchen scissors, I cut off the bottom of the stems.
2 I don’t wash mine, but rather, leave them dry until I am ready to use them.
3 I fill a quart-sized mason jar partially with water and put the bunch, stem-ends down, into the water.
4 Cover your cilantro loosely with a plastic bag and store in the refrigerator.
5 Change the water after about 3 days for maximum freshness.
Enjoy!
