Culantro

Eryngium foetidum

herb

Culantro (Eryngium foetidum), known as recao, shado beni, or sawtooth herb, is a tropical herb whose flavor is essentially a much stronger, more pungent cilantro - so much so that it stands in for cilantro in cooking and, unlike cilantro, keeps its flavor through long cooking. It forms a flat rosette of long, narrow, saw-toothed leaves close to the ground, with a spiny flower stalk if it bolts. A defining ingredient in Caribbean sofrito and recaito and in Thai, Vietnamese, and other Southeast Asian dishes, it is a tender perennial usually grown as an annual, and it prefers shade, where it stays leafy longest before bolting.

✅ Plant alongside

Good neighbors that attract beneficial insects or deter pests

• Pepper — Tall pepper plants cast the light shade culantro craves while both like rich, moist soil
• Tomato — Provides dappled shade that slows culantro from bolting in summer heat
• Eggplant — Another warm-season crop whose canopy shelters the low culantro rosette

🛡️ Pest & disease prevention

Proactive ways to stop trouble before it starts — tap a name with an arrow for its full guide

• Slugs →

  The low, ground-hugging leaves are vulnerable in the damp shade culantro likes - use grit, traps, or hand-picking at night

• Aphids →

  Rinse colonies from the leaf rosette and support natural predators

• Leaf miners →

  Remove and destroy mined leaves promptly and use floating row cover early if miners are a known problem

🌾 Harvest & storage

Harvest culantro by cutting the outer leaves at the base of the rosette as needed, leaving the center to keep producing, or shear the whole rosette an inch above the crown and let it regrow. The flavor is strong, so use less than you would cilantro. It holds up to cooking far better than cilantro - add it to sofrito, stews, curries, and marinades. Leaves are best fresh but can be frozen, chopped in oil, or blended into seasoning pastes.

🥗 Nutrition & benefits

Culantro carries the bright, pungent, cilantro-like flavor central to Caribbean sofrito and recaito and to Thai and Vietnamese cooking, where it seasons soups, stews, curries, salsas, and marinades. Because its flavor survives cooking, it is added to long-simmered dishes where cilantro would fade. It is valued purely as a flavor herb, used fresh and in small amounts.