How to Store Cilantro

Here's our easy and handy dandy tip for storing Cilantro, also known as Coriander, 香菜 or 芫茜. Cilantro is used in so many Chinese dishes that it is almost as necessary as spring onion and ginger.  It's fresh green leaves and citrusy, slightly bitter, slightly peppery taste not only freshens your dish up with a lively blast of green but can bring the dish up to the next taste level as well.  

But the thing that was always annoying with cilantro was that by the next day, no matter what I did, the cilantro would be limp and start turning yellow.  Yiks!  What to do?!

Grow Spring Onions in a Jar

Bring the spring in, I say, bring it in!  We've been experimenting with spring onions 珠蔥 also known as green onions or scallions, trying to find a way to have this essential to Chinese cuisine flavoring unit at hand whenever we need it.  

I don't know if it's just my luck but, really, almost every time I need spring onions, all the stores are out of it!  And if you cook Chinese food, you know as I know that you will always need some spring onion for your dinner dishes, be it a sprinkled garnish, a way to aromatize your oil, or even as the tasty vegetable portion of your stir fry.  

Which is why, here in Hong Kong, I have never understood why it is so hard to buy spring onion after a certain time of the day.  A shake of the head, a shrug of the shoulders...sorry, no spring onions.  Urghh...how devastating to that delectable dish that you have in mind for dinner!  

Recently we have discovered a way to easily insure ourselves against the abyss that is the lack of spring onion:  we have been growing our own spring onions in a jar!