Epazote vs Coriander leaf
The short answer
Asked because both are Mexican green herbs and answered quickly: they are unrelated and taste nothing alike. Coriander is citric and fresh and goes in raw. Epazote is camphorous, faintly petroleum-like and medicinal, goes into the pot with the beans, and survives an hour of simmering. Epazote is also carminative, which is why it is in the bean pot, and it is the flavour of a quesadilla with squash blossom.
Side by side
| Epazote | Coriander leaf | |
|---|---|---|
| Botanical identity | Dysphania ambrosioides (L.) Mosyakin & Clemants | Coriandrum sativum L. |
| Part used | leaf | leaf |
| Origin | Central and southern Mexico, with a range extending through Central America and into South America before European contact. | The eastern Mediterranean and western Asia, where the species has been cultivated for several thousand years. |
| Flavour notes | resinous, camphorous, medicinal, bitter, petroleum-like | citric, green, cooling, sappy, soapy to some |
| Heat | Scoville does not apply | Scoville does not apply |
| Flavour | Sharp, medicinal and slightly numbing, with a bitterness underneath. Used at the quantity Mexican cooking uses it — a sprig in a pot, not a handful — it does not taste of any of that in the finished dish. It reads instead as a savoury depth that makes beans taste cooked rather than merely boiled. | Bright, citric and cooling, with a soapy or metallic edge that some people barely register and others cannot get past. It cuts through fat, chilli and richness better than almost anything else, which is why it is used at the end of dishes from Mexico to Vietnam. |
| Aroma | Powerful, resinous and camphorous, with a note people variously describe as petrol, turpentine, creosote or savory-gone-wrong. It is genuinely unlike anything else in this catalogue, and the Nahuatl name is not being polite about it. | Powerful, citric and unmistakable, with a green sappy quality underneath. It is one of very few herbs strong enough to identify a cuisine from across a room, and one of very few that a large minority of people actively dislike. |
Which should you buy?
Epazote
Grow it if you can and buy it fresh if you cannot. Epazote is among the easiest plants in this catalogue to raise — it is genuinely a weed — and the gap between fresh and dried is large enough that a windowsill plant is a better investment than a jar. Dried epazote earns a place in a bean pot and nowhere else.
Coriander leaf
This is the one profile on SpiceHQ where the buying advice is to skip a form entirely. Dried coriander leaf keeps almost nothing of what makes the herb worth having, and a dish built on its citric lift is better made with a different herb than with a dried version of the right one. Buy fresh, use the stems as well as the leaves, freeze the roots if you find a bunch that has them, and treat the jar of green flakes in the supermarket as a colouring rather than a seasoning.
Full detail on epazote and coriander leaf, including evidence grades and sources for every claim above.