Weird. I’ve looked in the markets, the veg stalls, and the supermarkets and nobody has it.
Maybe it’s just my location.
do you want coriander or cillantro? seeds are seldom produced here, we finished corander fields 2 months ago when the raging heat killed all the mature plants and the coriander could be harvested before rains started.
for foliage, should be year round. they just grow small plants essentially like hydroponics and pull the whole mini plants for shelf life. although insanely energy intensive you can have them even in summer. you can buy kg bags of organic seed for this purpose from known you very cheap if you want to grow your own 
The fresh green plant. I guess most people call that ‘cilantro’?
Yeah, I figured plants wouldn’t survive this weather in an open-field situation. I assumed that would explain the shortage. Should have planted some myself, but never got around to it.
I noticed the price of cilantro is/was insane when it was available - I got one small packet from the supermarket for NT$50 a while back, and saw slightly bigger ones for NT$80. I’m making a mental list of these things (someone mentioned tomatillos a while back) with a view to possibly setting up a greenhouse with lighting and chillers. I reckon I can get the energy more-or-less for free with a modest number of PV panels.
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Ithinkthe standard is cilantro =herb coriander = spice parts of the plants. it’s important when.talking.about the product, but when talking about the species of plant it seems to be a free for all. at least that’s how it seems from my experience.
but anyway, if the herb aspect is the goal, you dont need greenhouses and all that jazz. same with tomatillows (easy in non windy/heavy rainfall spots due to premature fruit drop here).
you can quite easily setup a microgreens situation with this, plant less densely and use a slightly more nutrient rich soil mix to get what is usually sold in the store. sometimes you see bags/bunches sold of actually mature foliage sold but that’s more often due to desperation in supply contracts. a rotating few trays of seeds are fairly easy with cilantro and the seeds are not the most expensive. I remember 300 something per kg certified organic. but I may be remembering slightly wrong, we buy seeds in 3 year batches. but shouldn’t be too much.
field grown is fine now in the summer (just not if you want coriander (seed) in quantity. the point with the supermarket stuff is they pick young plants (before they start dieing) and with roots (for shelf life). to replicate their large size they are grown in darker situations (shaded, large places are shaded due to rack systems) which causes etiolation which has longer (stretched) stems and broader leaves that are softer and hold more water. means they sell more water basically. they also pump a decent amount of nitrogen in for a burst of growth to get that volume up to the business models margins they want. that may or may not be what one wants, but it’s easy as heck to do at home, even in an apartment
as an aside, culantro is adapted to tropical weather, can be bought here, and generally works better. but to be fair, it’s not as nice in fresh western foods like a salad or sandwich.
Real gumbo should include okra, onion, green pepper, a good golden brown roux, chicken thigh boneless, double smoked sausage, chicken stock, cayenne pepper, etc.
Deviate too much and it is sacrilege.
For what it’s worth I was unable to find that in Taipei / Danshui a month or so ago, despite having bought it regularly for years.
Discussed over here, including discussion of what it includes:
At the moment I only have a rooftop, though - no field! I was pondering on what I could grow in small spaces and make a bit of pocket money from.
But yeah, I’m intending to head over to the flower market and get some culantro in a pot. It’s not great for using fresh (because of the rather tough texture) but it’s fine for cooking, and definitely less easy to kill than cilantro.
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worth noting all these “chili” types are fairly useless. thousands of chili types. if using the name for an entire genus, it’s very useful to use the brand. for example a lot of Taiwanese made “mexican”, “korean” etc chili powders and flakes are actually #193 and similar cayenne types or birds eye types. rarely are they actually imported chilis from mexico or wherever unless they explicitly state a variety on the label (like chipotle, habanero etc). the trick is more in the other ingredients to make a similar spice.
it can make recipes vary quite a lot between brands. good to stick to brands you know the flavor as they will usually stick to their variety of chili used.
pardon the knit picking. I just dislike these companies being so vague. saying chili powder is about as useful as saying contains meat.
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Are knits baby klice? 
you will never no!
Agreed, I typically use cumin, paprika, and fresh chilis. I got this because I was curious when I saw it, and it isn’t very interesting, but i toss some in the pot while i have it. Only sharing this because it was requested
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Sorry, I meant to say other Mexican ones besides the cookbox one,…such as ancho, chipotle etc… But that one is just fine. I think they also used to have it by the bag.
I just noticed it with the small jars at places like Carrefore. Everything was minimum 49 the last time I went. I remember a lot of it being like 35.
I’m sure if you went to one of those chili competition cook-offs there are lots of arguments. haha
I think in Texas it might even be a crime to call it chili if there’s beans in it
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when doing price comparisons, one should always use price per gram. grams vs dollars. then it’s easy to see. some jars are bigger and more money, but cheaper by the gram thus cheaper. good to use these comparisons, they probably have gone up recently. taiwan is pretty good at having prices per weight on the labels in places like carrefour.
taiwans weather this year is total bullshit, expect locally produced stuff to be up, which is fair. even the weeds are dead in places.
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