Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Culantro is a leafy green herb used as food and seasoning across Latin America and the Caribbean. Its botanical name is Eryngium foetidum. The taste is like cilantro, but much stronger.
The plant grows as a flat rosette of long leaves with saw-like edges. Cooks know it as recao, culantro coyote or long coriander. In Puerto Rico it is a core part of sofrito.
It also has a long folk record as a home remedy for gas, fever and aches. Human research on those uses is very thin. Traditional use tells you people valued the herb; it is not proof that it works, and it is not proof that strong doses are safe.
No one has shown, in people, how culantro acts as a medicine. What follows comes from laboratory and animal work.
In test tubes, the leaf oil slows the growth of several bacteria and fungi. In lab tests it also kills some parasite larvae. Whether any of this happens inside the human body is not established.
In rodents, leaf extracts have eased swelling, pain and seizure activity. Some rodent studies also saw lower blood sugar. These were concentrated extracts given at set doses, not sprigs of herb in a stew.
A common idea is that the herb aids digestion by relaxing the gut. That idea rests on tradition and on animal tissue studies. It has not been tested properly in people.
Most people meet culantro as a fresh leaf in the kitchen. It is sold in bunches in Latin, Caribbean and Asian markets.
Common forms: - Fresh leaves, whole or chopped. - Frozen or dried leaf. - Sofrito and recaito pastes, often with onion, pepper and garlic.
- Home-made leaf teas, used in folk practice. - Essential oil, sold for scent and lab use, not for swallowing. - Capsules or tinctures, which are rare and poorly standardised.
Food forms are the best studied by far, because they are simply food. Concentrated extracts and the oil are a different matter. Their safety in people has not been tested.
Culantro is native to the warm parts of the Americas, including Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. It has been used in cooking and home remedies there for centuries.
Folk healers used leaf teas for stomach gas, colic, fevers and colds. Crushed leaves were laid on bites, sprains and sore joints. Roots were sometimes chewed or boiled for the same aims.
Traders and migrants carried the plant to Asia, where it became a staple herb in Vietnam, Thailand and India. There it picked up local uses for fever and stomach trouble. These records describe what people did, not what was proven.
Stop using it and see a doctor if you get a rash, swelling of the lips or face, or trouble breathing after eating or touching the plant.
Also see a doctor if: - A fever stays above 39C, or lasts more than three days. - Stomach pain, vomiting or diarrhoea does not settle in 48 hours. - Your skin blisters or burns after contact with the oil. - You have diabetes and notice shaking, sweating or confusion, which can mean low blood sugar.
In the United States, the European Union and across Latin America, culantro is an ordinary food herb. It is not approved as a medicine anywhere. Capsules and extracts are sold as supplements, which are not checked for strength or purity the way drugs are.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
One email with the summary. We'll also send a short weekly evidence update — unsubscribe any time.
