Too Much Cilantro? How to Fix Your Meal

Before you fix the salsa, ask who’s complaining. Too much cilantro usually means the herb’s sharp, green, citrusy smell has taken over, and the fix is to pick out what you can, then dilute. But if one person at the table says it tastes like soap, the problem may be partly genetic, not the amount in the bowl, and diluting may not win them over. Figure out which you’re dealing with first.

Quick answer

What’s wrong	Fastest fix	If that’s not enough
Just added, leaves or sprigs still visible	Pick them out	Dilute
Raw salsa, pico de gallo, guacamole	Add more of the base: tomato, onion, avocado, chile	Make a cilantro-free second batch and combine
Cooked curry, soup or rice dish	Add more of the base; simmer a few more minutes	Second batch and combine
Bitter edge	A pinch of salt, or a little sugar where it fits	Dilute
One person says it tastes like soap	Serve cilantro on the side	Make their portion without it

Is it the amount, or the person?

In a 2012 genetic study of 14,604 people of European ancestry who reported whether cilantro tasted soapy to them, researchers found a genetic variant in a cluster of smell-receptor genes, one of which codes for a receptor that responds strongly to compounds behind cilantro’s odor. Participants of African-American, Latino, East Asian and South Asian ancestry were all significantly less likely than Europeans to report a soapy taste.¹

The genetic link is real but small. The variant explains only about 0.5 percent of the variation in whether people find cilantro soapy, and the authors note that environmental factors may also play a part.¹

What that means for dinner: if most of the table is happy and one person finds the dish soapy, it may not have too much cilantro at all, and diluting it may not win them over. Serving cilantro at the table, or setting a portion aside before it goes in, is the more reliable fix.

Caught early: take it out

If you added fresh cilantro as whole sprigs or roughly chopped leaves, pick them out with tongs or a fork, or lift them off a soup with a slotted spoon. It’s the only fix that removes cilantro instead of diluting or masking it. Finely minced cilantro mixed into a salsa won’t come back out, so go straight to dilution.

Sheer volume: too much cilantro for the dish

Dilute. Add more of everything except cilantro. For a raw salsa or pico de gallo, that means more tomato, onion and chile. For guacamole, another avocado. If you can’t just add to the bowl, Tasting Table suggests (for garlic) making a second batch without the overdosed ingredient and combining the two.² The math works the same for cilantro. A second batch is quick for a salsa or sofrito and slow for a long-cooked dish like a curry or arroz con pollo, where adding more of the base liquid and vegetables is usually more practical.

Add a competing flavor the dish already has. More onion or more chile (fresh jalapeño, or a small pinch of cayenne) gives your palate something else to notice. That’s balance, not chemistry: we found no source showing onion or chile heat neutralizes cilantro. In a raw dish, extra raw onion can easily become the new problem, so add a little at a time. In a cooked dish, give added onion a few minutes to soften. Start with less chile than you think. It’s easy to add heat and hard to take it away.

Cooking it out

Cilantro is one of the delicate herbs best added a minute or two before cooking ends, because long heat costs flavor and aroma.³ So simmering a cooked dish a few more minutes can soften an overdose. We found no test of how long that takes, and it only works where the rest of the dish can handle more cooking. It’s no help for a raw salsa or a garnish.

Bitter edge

If the dish tastes bitter as well as strong, reach for salt before lime. In controlled taste tests with pure solutions, sweet tastes and sodium salts suppressed bitterness, and citric acid was the weakest.⁴ That’s a lab finding, not a test on cilantro, but it suggests a pinch of salt, or a little sugar in a dish that suits it, is more likely to help than more lime.

Preventing it next time

Add it at the end. LSU AgCenter suggests adding delicate herbs, cilantro included, in the last minute or two of cooking or sprinkling them on just before serving.³ Late cilantro is also easier to see, taste and adjust.

Serve it on the side for mixed company. Some people find cilantro soapy, so put the chopped cilantro on the table instead of in the pot.

Convert carefully from dried. LSU AgCenter’s rule of thumb is one teaspoon of crumbled dried herb for one tablespoon of fresh.³ More in dried cilantro vs. fresh.

Check what the recipe means. If the recipe called for ground coriander seed and you used too much of that, it’s a different problem: see too much coriander.

Eriksson N et al., A genetic variant near olfactory receptor genes influences cilantro preference, Flavour, 2012. link.springer.com · Peer-reviewed ↩ ↩²
Simple Ways To Tone Down The Pungency Of Garlic, Harmony Colangelo, Tasting Table, 2023. tastingtable.com · Publication ↩
Flavorful Herbs, LSU AgCenter. lsuagcenter.com · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³
Green BG et al., Taste Mixture Interactions: Suppression, Additivity, and the Predominance of Sweetness, Physiology & Behavior, 2010. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov · Peer-reviewed ↩

Too Much Cilantro? How to Fix It, and When It’s Not the Amount