Meet culantro—cilantro’s tropical counterpart. It tastes like a more pungent cilantro, and in the right conditions, it grows all year round. This episode touches on how limited our repetoire of herbs are and the possiblities that come when we expand our selection beyond what's just avaliable at the grocery store. We’ll talk to food blogger Reina Gascon-Lopez on how culantro is used in Puerto Rican cuisine and award-winning cookbook author Andrea Nguyen on how she uses it in Vietnamese cooking.

Topics covered in this episode:


Min 0:45: Annual plants and their tropical counterparts

Min 3:19: Meet Reina Gascon-Lopez

Min 4:17: What is culantro?

Min 6:11: How Reina cooks with cilantro

Min 7:42: Culantro in the US

Min 8:46: The downside to culantro

Min 9:45: Meet Andrea Nguyen

Min 11:37: Three sources of cilantro notes in Vietnamese cooking

Min 12:42: How colonization and globalization affect our palates

Min 17:24: Expanding the way you think of herbs



Climate Cuisine is part of Whetstone Radio Collective. Learn more about this episode of Climate Cuisine at www.whetstoneradio.com, on IG and Twitter at @whetstoneradio, and YouTube at /WhetstoneRadio.

Guests: Reina Gascon-Lopez (@thesofritoproject), Andrea Nguyen (@andreanguyen88)