Types of Parsley – Curly or Italian

Choose curly parsley or Italian parsley first. One is a ruffled garnish. The other is a flat cooking leaf. Read the Latin before you buy.

Choose curly parsley or Italian parsley first

The first choice is the leaf you want to cook with. Curly parsley is the ruffled garnish plant, usually a dense clump about eight to fourteen inches tall, with a milder flavor because the leaflets hold less essential oil. Italian parsley is the flat cooking leaf with a stronger, sweeter flavor, and the plant can stretch two to three feet and look more open. [1] [2] Read the Latin on the tag before you buy, because shop names often say only parsley. Hamburg parsley, grown for a swollen white root, is a different form we do not list. Moss Curled is still curly parsley, not a third kind. [3] [4]

Browse by kind

Match the leaf you want, then pick that kind. Curly parsley is the garnish clump. Italian parsley is the cooking leaf. Care for the plant you already have on How to Grow Parsley.

Curly parsley

curly parsley is the ruffled garnish plant, about eight to fourteen inches, with tightly curled leaflets. Buy this group when you want a plate garnish and a dense clump at the front of a bed. Moss Curled is that same curly habit as a named cultivar. The leaflets are milder than Italian parsley, so cooks who want a strong parsley flavor usually skip this group. Neither one makes a Hamburg root.

Italian parsley

Italian parsley is the flat-leaf cooking plant, Petroselinum crispum var. neapolitanum. The leaflets lie open, so they chop cleanly for sauces, soups, and tabbouleh. The flavor is stronger and sweeter than curly parsley, and the plant can grow taller and more open. Buy it when you want the cooking leaf, not a ruffled garnish and not cilantro.

If you want a cooking leaf, buy Italian parsley — curly parsley and Moss Curled stay a ruffled garnish.