Super Celery – All for the Eating

This blog is to honour the humble celery – all of it, from top to tail.

Celery takes a while to grow, costs an arm and a leg at the supermarket, and makes up one of the top wasted food categories in New Zealand – vegetables.

Once you’ve eaten the crunchy stalks, let’s face it – the green leaves are usually scrapped.  Despite all good intentions, if the celery stalks go limp in the fridge, they’re likely to be thrown away too.

Before I cover some of the ways I use all of the celery plant, here’s a reminder why celery is good for you: contains vitamin C, beta carotene, and flavonoids, and at least 12 additional kinds of antioxidant nutrients found in a single stalk. It is also reported to reduce inflammation, supports digestion amongst other benefits.

Storing Celery

If you haven’t already discovered, a limp bunch of celery isn’t very appealing. Some try wrapping in foil, or standing the stems in a glass of water, but according to a University of Otago study arranged by Love Food Hate Waste New Zealand, the best way to store celery is:

• If a whole bunch of celery, wrap the root end of the celery in a paper towel, place the whole celery in a ziplock bag and squeeze out the excess air.
• If you have chopped celery, place it in an airtight container lined with a paper towel.
• Storing celery this way means that it will last for five days longer than if you just leave it unwrapped in the fridge

Celery Tops

What happens to the green leaves, you may ask? There are HEAPS of them, right? Yes there are, and yes they are both good for you (have more calcium, potassium, and vitamin C than the stalks) and are very edible too.

Here are my tips for using ALL the celery plant.

As soon as possible, so the whole bunch of celery doesn’t get abandoned in the bottom of the veggie drawer, either store correctly (see the paper towel/zip log bag method) or separate the stalks from leafy greens and get to work!

Using Fresh Celery Leaves

Celery leaves can be used as you would a herb. Before using, I recommend that you rinse them with cold water and spin them (as you would with salad greens). Then finely slice them, roughly chop them, mince them or leave them whole.

Add celery leaves to salads, pesto, hummus, stir-fries (add in the last minute), soups, pasta sauce or as a garnish. You can also blanch them and freeze them as you may do with basil (with olive oil in ice cube trays).

Dehydrated Celery Leaves

Tear the leaves from the upper parts of the stalk (reserving the thin stalks for more usage ideas), give the celery leaves a quick rinse then allow to drain on a tea towel or spin in a salad spinner to remove excess water. Place in a single layer on your dehydrator layer racks and dry until crunchy.

You can either store them as whole dehydrated leaves (which can be used in soups and casseroles) or you can blitz them when they are dry and crunchy and turn them into a celery powder.

Celery powder is REALLY helpful if you love preserving chutneys and relishes. Often celery seeds are called upon as an ingredient and they are really hard to find in the supermarket, so using concentrated celery powder will add that celery taste the recipe calls for. Or, you can add your celery powder into a mixed leafy green powder, along with other greens you’ve managed to dehydrate during the season (such as kale, spinach, chard or silverbeet).

You can also make celery salt – which is a combination of a cupful of whole dehyrdrated leaves with 1/8 teaspoon of salt. Blitz up the leaves into a powder, add salt…a delicious mi!  Store-bought celery salt is made using celery seeds, but this homemade version using the leaves is just as delicious.

Celery Stalks

Not only can you use the obvious long stalks, don’t forget to use the finer stalks attached to the leaves! Finely chop and saute them in butter before adding to a white sauce, throw them into a meat based or veggie dish, soup or slaw, finely chop them to free-flow freeze for a Frozen Mystery Mix (a convenient bag of goodness ready for your next soup, slow cooker recipe or casserole) or dehydrate them for a rainy day occasion. You can always juice them too, along with the leaves!

A crisp stick of celery of course is delicious filled with cream cheese or peanut butter (if that’s your thing) and makes a perfect vegetable stick for dips and platters.

I recently learned that you should chop celery just before cooking or serving to maintain nutrients (even chopped and stored for a few hours will lose some of their goodness). However, steamed celery will retain flavor and almost all of its nutrients.

Celery Odds & Ends

Use every inch of that celery plant! Be sure to rinse then freeze any odds-and-ends in your Vegetable Stock freezer bag  and, then you have exhausted all other options, throw scraps into your compost.

Regrowing Celery

The very base end of the celery however can be planted. It will regenerate from the base and regrow new stalks. Cut the base (allowing a good 5cms), sit it in the bottom of a glass and fill with enough water to cover just half of the base. Place on a window sill so it gets some light while the roots develop. Over time roots will grow and little green stalks will emerge from the centre of the base. Once established (with obvious roots growing from the base and the base itself beginning to decompose), this can be planted back into the garden. While it loves the sun, celery plants love water too. You can plant it in a pot while you wait for the weather to turn.