Cilantro Oil: The Three Different Things Sold Under One Name
Cilantro oil is one of those terms that sounds specific and is not. Ask three cooks what it means and you will get a vivid green herb oil for finishing a dish, a jar of leaves steeping quietly in olive oil, and a small brown bottle of steam-distilled essential oil made from the seeds rather than the leaves. Those are three different products with three different uses, and only one of them is what most recipes mean. This article separates them, gives the method that reliably produces the bright green version, and is straight about the part most articles skate over — that a fresh, wet herb suspended in oil is not a shelf-stable thing.
For our own oil, see our cold-pressed organic Marrakech olive oil.
The Short Answer
- Cilantro and coriander are the same plant, Coriandrum sativum. In American English "cilantro" means the leaves; in British English "coriander" covers both leaves and seeds, which is exactly where the confusion starts.
- The bright green oil that chefs use is made by blanching the leaves, blending them with oil, and straining. It is a fresh preparation, not a preserve.
- Coriander seed essential oil is a completely different product — distilled, highly concentrated, and not a culinary finishing oil.
- Fresh herbs carry water, and water in oil is the condition that matters. The safe route is to treat herb oil as a fridge item with a short life, or to use dried herb if you want something that keeps.
- We do not restate the botulism guidance here: our article on garlic infused olive oil sets out the risk and the tested acidification method in full, and it applies to fresh herbs just as it does to fresh garlic. Read it before you make anything you intend to keep.
- The soapy taste is real and partly genetic — Eriksson and colleagues (Flavour, 2012) found a variant near a cluster of olfactory receptor genes associated with it, though common variants explained only about 8.7% of the variation.
- Sidr & Stone's olive oil is single-estate, rain-fed and cold-pressed within hours of harvest at a family-owned grove on the plains outside Marrakech, Morocco — a base oil worth building a herb oil on.
What "Cilantro Oil" Actually Means — Three Products, One Name
Before you make anything, work out which of these you are actually after. They are not interchangeable and one of them should not go near a plate.
| Product | What it is | Colour and flavour | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blanched herb oil ("restaurant style") | Leaves blanched, refreshed in iced water, blended with oil, strained | Vivid, almost fluorescent green; clean, grassy, immediate | Finishing — drizzled over soups, fish, rice, roasted vegetables |
| Cold steep or gentle warm infusion | Leaves left in oil to give up flavour over hours or days | Olive to khaki; softer, rounder, less bright | Dressings and marinades, made in small amounts and used quickly |
| Coriander seed essential oil | Steam-distilled from the dried seeds, not the leaves | Clear; sweet, floral, intensely aromatic | Perfumery and flavour manufacturing — not a culinary finishing oil |
The third row catches people out most often, because "coriander oil" in a supplier catalogue almost always means the seed distillate. If a listing quotes a linalool percentage, you are looking at an essential oil, not something to pour over a bowl of rice.
Why Fresh Coriander Is the Hard Case for Infusing
Most guides to infused olive oil start with the flavour and mention keeping it as an afterthought. With coriander that order is wrong, because coriander leaf is roughly ninety per cent water by weight — far wetter than the dried rosemary or chilli that people usually have in mind when they picture a bottle of herb oil on a windowsill.
Water introduced into oil creates low-acid, low-oxygen pockets. That is the specific condition that matters, and it is the same condition that makes fresh garlic in oil a genuine risk rather than a theoretical one. We deliberately do not repeat the detail here — our article on garlic infused olive oil carries the full explanation and the tested acidification protocol, and everything it says about fresh garlic applies to a fresh, wet herb.
The practical upshot is simple and it shapes the rest of this article. If you want a herb oil that keeps at room temperature, use a properly dried herb. If you want the bright green fresh-leaf version — which is the one worth making — treat it as a fridge preparation with a short life, in the same way you would treat a fresh pesto.
The Blanch-and-Blend Method, Step by Step
This is the method worth leading with, because it produces the colour and the clean flavour that people are actually chasing, and because blanching gives you a much drier leaf to work with than throwing raw coriander into a jar.
- Pick and wash. Use leaves and the tender upper stalks; discard anything yellowing. Wash and spin dry thoroughly.
- Blanch. Drop the leaves into well-salted boiling water for about fifteen seconds — no longer. You are fixing the chlorophyll, not cooking them.
- Shock. Lift them straight into iced water. This stops the cooking and locks the green.
- Dry hard. Squeeze the leaves in a clean cloth until they stop giving up water, then blot again. This step does more for the finished oil than any other.
- Blend. Roughly one part packed blanched leaf to two parts oil by volume. Blend at high speed for two to three minutes, until the mixture is warm to the touch and evenly coloured.
- Strain. Pour through fine muslin set over a jug and let gravity do it. Do not squeeze the cloth, or you will push the solids through and cloud the oil.
- Chill and settle. Refrigerate. Any remaining water sinks; decant the clear green oil off the top.
Most failures come from two or three predictable places, and they are all fixable next time.
| What went wrong | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Oil is khaki rather than green | Leaves were not blanched, or were blanched too long | Fifteen seconds in boiling water, then straight into ice |
| Oil is cloudy and will not clear | The muslin was squeezed, or water was left in the leaf | Let it drip unaided; squeeze the leaves drier before blending |
| Flavour is thin and watery | Too much oil for the amount of leaf | Move towards one part packed leaf to two parts oil |
| A layer separates out in the fridge | Residual water settling below the oil | Decant the clear green oil off the top and discard the rest |
| Finished oil tastes harsh | The base oil is too bitter and is competing with the herb | Use a gentler, well-balanced extra virgin |
The base oil matters more than people expect. A robust, peppery extra virgin will fight the herb; a gentler, well-balanced unfiltered oil carries it. If you are unsure what your bottle actually is, our explainer on what extra virgin olive oil means is the short version.
Keeping It: What Each Method Gives You
Herb oils are made on a trade-off between colour, flavour intensity and how long the thing lasts. There is no method that maximises all three.
| Method | Colour | Flavour | Where it lives | Realistic life |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blanch and blend (fresh leaf) | Vivid green | Bright, grassy, clean | Refrigerator, sealed | A few days — treat like fresh pesto |
| Cold steep (fresh leaf) | Dull olive | Softer, more vegetal | Refrigerator, sealed | A few days |
| Dried-herb infusion | Pale gold-green | Muted, more like coriander seed | Cool, dark cupboard | Weeks — the only room-temperature option |
| Frozen in an ice-cube tray | Holds green well | Close to fresh on thawing | Freezer | Months |
Freezing is the underrated answer. Portion the finished oil into a covered ice-cube tray, freeze, and drop a cube into a pan or over a bowl as needed. You keep the colour, you keep the flavour, and you sidestep the keeping question entirely.
Why It Tastes of Soap to Some People
Coriander divides people more sharply than any other common herb, and the divide is not squeamishness. The characteristic aroma comes largely from aldehydes in the leaf, and some of those compounds also turn up in soaps and detergents — so for a subset of people the association is not imagined, it is chemically reasonable.
Eriksson and colleagues published a genome-wide association study in Flavour in 2012 covering 14,604 participants of European ancestry who reported whether coriander tasted soapy, with replication in a separate group of 11,851 who reported whether they liked it. They found a single variant, rs72921001, associated with soapy-taste detection, sitting within a cluster of olfactory receptor genes on chromosome 11 — among them OR6A2, which binds several of the aldehydes responsible for the aroma.
The honest caveat is the one usually left out. The same paper estimated that the heritability tagged by common variants was low, around 0.087. In plain terms: there is a real genetic signal, and it explains only a small slice of why people differ. Familiarity, cuisine and how the herb is prepared do a great deal of the rest — which is why some people who cannot abide raw coriander are perfectly happy with a blanched herb oil, where the sharpest volatile notes have been softened.
The Objections Worth Taking Seriously
"Doesn't blending in a machine ruin good olive oil?" It warms it, and warmth is not free — polyphenols degrade with heat and time, so a blended herb oil is not the way to enjoy a peppery oil's own character. But you are not drinking the base oil, you are using it as a carrier. Use a good oil because a defective one will taint the herb, not because you expect its bitterness to survive.
"Is cilantro oil healthier than plain olive oil?" No, and it is worth saying plainly. Infusing adds aroma compounds; it does not add polyphenols. The EU's registered health claim for olive oil polyphenols under Regulation (EU) 432/2012 requires at least 5 mg of hydroxytyrosol and its derivatives per 20 g of oil — roughly 250 mg/kg — and that figure is a property of the base oil, unchanged by what you steep in it. The widely circulated 350 mg/kg threshold is simply incorrect.
"Shop-bought herb oils keep for months, so why can't mine?" Because they are made differently. Commercial infused oils are typically built from dried or extracted flavour components, or acidified and validated to a written specification, precisely so that they can sit on a shelf. Our guide to infused olive oil covers how to judge a bought bottle; the comparison to make is with fresh pesto, not with a bottle of chilli oil.
Why Sidr & Stone
We do not make a cilantro oil. What we make is the base you would build one on — and with a herb oil, the base is doing more work than it gets credit for, because any defect in the oil comes straight through the herb.
- Single-estate — one family-owned grove on the plains outside Marrakech, Morocco, with no blending across origins.
- Rain-fed — no irrigation; the trees take what the season gives them.
- Organically grown — no synthetic fertilisers, pesticides or herbicides.
- Single harvest — one small pressing a season; once it is gone it is gone until next year.
- Cold-pressed within hours of harvest — flavour, aroma and polyphenols preserved.
- Unfiltered extra virgin — minimally processed, and it may show natural sediment, which is normal.
- 100% natural — one ingredient, olive oil, nothing added.
- Dark glass with a gold label — 500ml, packaged to keep light off the oil.
- Halal certified.
- 10% of profits to charity, across every product we sell.
- Fulfilment in the UK, EU, and US.
We will not tell you Sidr & Stone is the best olive oil for infusing — that would be the sort of unverifiable claim this article has been picking apart. What we will say is that our oil is single-estate Moroccan, rain-fed, organically grown and cold-pressed within hours of harvest, and that a herb oil is only ever as clean as the oil underneath it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is cilantro oil?
Most often it means a bright green finishing oil made by blanching fresh coriander leaves, blending them with oil and straining. It can also mean a simple cold steep of leaves in oil, or — confusingly — the steam-distilled essential oil made from coriander seeds, which is a manufacturing ingredient rather than a culinary one.
Is cilantro the same as coriander?
They are the same plant, Coriandrum sativum. American English uses "cilantro" for the leaves and "coriander" for the seeds; British English uses "coriander" for both and relies on context.
How do you make cilantro oil green?
Blanch the leaves for about fifteen seconds, shock them in iced water, squeeze them very dry, then blend with oil and strain through muslin without pressing. The blanching step fixes the chlorophyll, which is what stops the oil turning khaki.
How long does homemade cilantro oil last?
A fresh-leaf herb oil is a refrigerator preparation with a life measured in days, not weeks — think fresh pesto rather than chilli oil. Freezing it in an ice-cube tray is the practical way to keep it for longer.
Is it safe to put fresh coriander in olive oil?
Fresh herbs bring water into the oil, which is the condition that makes fresh garlic in oil a genuine risk too. The safety detail and the tested method live in our article on garlic infused olive oil — read that before making anything you plan to store.
What do you use cilantro oil for?
Finishing rather than cooking. It is at its best drizzled over soups, grilled or roasted vegetables, rice and pulses, or stirred through a yoghurt dressing at the last moment. Heating it undoes the colour you worked for.
Which olive oil is best for making herb oils?
A clean, well-made extra virgin without obvious defects. A very aggressive, high-bitterness oil will compete with the herb; a gentler unfiltered oil carries it better. If you would like other herb-and-oil pairings, see our guides to basil olive oil and lemon olive oil.
Is olive oil a medicine?
No. Olive oil is a food, not a medicine. It has a long traditional history — including being honoured in the Prophetic Sunnah — and a substantial body of modern research, particularly around polyphenols, cardiovascular health, and the Mediterranean diet pattern. It can be a worthwhile part of a healthy routine, but it does not cure diseases and is not a substitute for medical care. Be cautious of any olive oil marketed with specific disease-cure claims.
Final Thoughts
Cilantro oil is one of the easiest good things to make in a home kitchen, and one of the easiest to make badly. Made badly it is a murky khaki liquid that tastes vaguely of cut grass and sits in the fridge for a fortnight nobody is comfortable with. Made well — blanched, shocked, squeezed dry, blended hard, strained gently — it is startlingly green, keeps its aroma, and lifts a plain bowl of rice or lentils into something worth sitting down for.
The two rules that matter are the ones nobody puts on the front of a recipe. Get the water out before the oil goes in. And decide at the outset whether you are making something to eat this week or something to keep, because those are different preparations and pretending otherwise is where people get into trouble.
If you would like the wider picture of what infusion does and does not do to an oil, our guide to infused olive oil is the parent article to this one, and our notes on choosing a quality olive oil cover the base you start from.
Our cold-pressed organic Marrakech olive oil — single-estate, rain-fed, and cold-pressed within hours of harvest — is available to pre-order. First harvest, estimated shipping from November 2026. Fulfilment in the UK, EU, and US.
Pre-Order Sidr & Stone Organic Marrakech Olive Oil — Limited First Harvest →
Disclaimer: This article explains how cilantro and coriander oils are made and kept at the time of writing; methods, specifications and research findings may change, and readers should check current sources. Olive oil is a food, not a medicine, and is not a substitute for medical treatment of any condition. For any health concern, consult a qualified medical professional.