About celery

[Marlingardener]

My husband loves celery, I consider celery something you eat if you have the desire to bite into water with hairs in it.
I put it in salads and on relish trays, but pick it out of the salad and avoid that part of the relish tray.
Anyone else have an aversion to celery?

 

[dragnlaw]

I quite like celery. It is crunchy and I often add it to all sorts of things that are too plain. Pasta salads, etc.

Plus I eat it stuffed with cheese (never got into the peanut butter stuffing). It often replaces a meal for me when I just can't be bothered with cooking.

Use your vegetable peeler or a paring knife - grab those fibres and pull them off. But they are known as the reverse calory food. Takes more calories to eat and digest them than you absorb from them - very popular with dieters! That would work with me except that I reverse the revers by adding all that cheese.

 

[Andy M.]

I don't like celery. The only time I use celery is in a mire poix or Thanksgiving stuffing etc. where it's going to be cooked to death.

 

[Aunt Bea]

I enjoy it but I do have to use my imagination to finish a whole bunch before it goes bad.

I use it for celery sticks, add it to soups, salads, casseroles, etc..

If it starts to wilt I cut it into celery sticks, cover it with water, and refrigerate it in a covered container.

I also mince it, place it in an 8 oz. covered container with enough water to cover and freeze it. I add the frozen lump to a pot of soup.

 

[blissful]

We grow it every few years. Mr bliss enjoys it fresh from the garden but finds it bitter from the grocery store.
I dehydrate it and process it in chunks down to powder. I use it in soups and stews and in a powdered vegetable stock. It isn't something we use fresh anymore. It seems like something is missing without celery in stocks with onions and carrot flavors.
Celery is mostly water, so it dehydrates down quite small.
This is a sink full of celery before processing.

 

[Aunt Bea]

We grow it every few years. Mr bliss enjoys it fresh from the garden but finds it bitter from the grocery store.
I dehydrate it and process it in chunks down to powder. I use it in soups and stews and in a powdered vegetable stock. It isn't something we use fresh anymore. It seems like something is missing without celery in stocks with onions and carrot flavors.
Celery is mostly water, so it dehydrates down quite small.
This is a sink full of celery before processing.

We tried growing it when I was a kid.

I remember that we wrapped and tied a tar paper collar around it so that it would grow up towards the light and blanch the stems.

It wasn’t one of our more successful experiments.

Celery is a popular food at Amish weddings. They used to say that if an Amish family planted a large amount of celery you could expect them to announce a wedding in the family.

 

[Roll_Bones]

By itself- No. In cooking-Hell yes.

 

[blissful]

@Aunt Bea I love that the amish do celery for weddings.
We never tried to blanch or keep the celery from the sun.
We did an experiment one year growing celery from seed and celery from grocery store stumps. At the end of the season they were all about 22 inches tall, and no difference between the ones from seed or the ones from stumps.

 

[Andy M.]

You can freeze l/o celery. It's only good for soups, stock, etc. after freezing.

 

[Kathleen]

I love celery. Cooked, raw, etc. One item that always landed on our Thanksgiving table is what we called stuffed celery. Take a block of cream cheese, a bit of Miracle whip (like a tablespoon) and smoosh it until it is spreadable. Add in broken pecan pieces and work in as much pecan as you can. Put them on a tray and dust with leftover pecan pieces. Refrigerate until time to serve. My sister and I would have to wrestle each other for the last piece.

 

[GinnyPNW]

For those gardeners that enjoy the flavor, you might consider growing Seasoning Celery - not Celery at all, but an herb that has that flavor. One can dry it too, as you would other herbs. Lots of places sell the seeds, Renee's Garden is just one of my favorites, no affiliations.

 

[Kathleen]

Lovage? I adore lovage, which tastes a lot like celery.

 

[dragnlaw]

Lovage for Celery and Borage for Cucumber.

 

[Paid In Grapes]

When roasting a duck I'd make a rack of celery to put the duck on. First time was because I didn't have a rack and there after it was because it was absolutely delicious.

I eat it daily sliced up for extra crunch in my salads and use it in making soups.

 

[taxlady]

For those gardeners that enjoy the flavor, you might consider growing Seasoning Celery - not Celery at all, but an herb that has that flavor. One can dry it too, as you would other herbs. Lots of places sell the seeds, Renee's Garden is just one of my favorites, no affiliations.

Um, that is celery. According to that website it's Apium graveolens, which Wikipedia says is celery. It may just be a specific cultivar of celery.

 

[taxlady]

I like celery raw, stuffed, and in cooking.

 

[GinnyPNW]

Um, that is celery. According to that website it's Apium graveolens, which Wikipedia says is celery. It may just be a specific cultivar of celery.

Uh, oh...sorry! It does not grow the thick stalks that one associates with celery? Is that better?

 

[pepperhead212]

That is just their name for Leaf Celery, or "Cutting" Celery - an herbal variety, that looks much like flat-leaf parsley. I grow that, more than celery, since it has a great flavor, and doesn't need insecticides, as much as regular celery. That is one reason I don't buy celery very often - it's always been included in "the dirty dozen", which are the worst fruits and vegetables that are almost always loaded with chemicals. And when I've tried growing it, I realized why they were always spraying things on it - it was a bug magnet, at least in my area.

I also tried growing leaf celery in hydroponics, and it grew too well, much like flat-leaf parsley! The roots became too large, and I eventually pulled it out. Tried the ones with different names, but they were all the same.

 

[taxlady]

I have bought "Chinese celery", which is used mostly cooked and mostly the leaves. The stems are very skinny. I don't season with celery enough and I like the ribs, so I buy the regular kind. There used to be a grocery store around here that sold more interesting vegetables than most other local places, like celeriac with the stems still attached and parsley root. Anyways, I like celeriac, AKA, celery root. The stems and leaves are shorter, narrower, and more strongly flavoured, possibly more bitter, than the regular stuff. Those leaves and stems on celeriac are good in soups and other cooking.

 

[dragnlaw]

When roasting a duck I'd make a rack of celery to put the duck on. First time was because I didn't have a rack and there after it was because it was absolutely delicious.

I eat it daily sliced up for extra crunch in my salads and use it in making soups.

What a fantastic idea! Wonder if it will work for goose as well.
Thanks for that Paid in Grapes!
I think I would want the thin celery you sometimes see in the grocers. Very strong taste those thin ones - not really good for eating raw, but in cooking they're great.