C'mon, celery! Don't disappoint me again!

Crab stuffed celery was a staple at Thanksgiving when I was growing up. Doesn’t taste nearly as good as an adult.

I can confirm that no “good-tasting celery” exists.

Alessan:

Including giving little kids a good scare :smiley:

I would never make chicken soup without celery.

Also, it is essential to mirepoix, the base of cuisine de la bonne femme, which I consider the greatest of French cookery.

Also, it is part of the Holy Trinity of Cajun cooking. How d’ya make a gumbo without celery?

^^This^^. Garden grown celery has much more flavor than store bought, it’s not as bitter and, since you can pick it young, is less fibrous. We love snapping a stalk off and snacking away while doing other gardening. I dehydrate the leaves to go in my “greens” seasoning mix (whatever edible greens in the garden like broccoli and its leaves, sage, chives and wild greens like lamb’s quarter and wild grape leaves).

I’ll have to look up celery root and it’s usages/harvesting time. The whole plant gets pulled come salsa making time so I might make something with it. Oh… Celeriac. Hmm, I bet my celery root is edible but won’t be as large or as tasty as Celeriac. But I’ll give it a try this Fall.

Oh, absolutely. It’s the mutant bulb from hell.

It’s good for anything that requires long cooking times - stocks, stews and the like. If you’d put celery in something and cook it for over an hour or two, you should use celery root instead.

Bear in mind that the edible root comes from a different strain of celery than the kind used for the stalks - Celeriac.

Yeah, I noted that in my post (two different plants) but since they come from the same family I am guessing Celery’s root ball is edible, too. (If there is enough root to do anything with it cooking wise). Much like Broccoli, Cauliflower and Cabbage are all from the same family (and all their leaves are edible, too).

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. I assumed it probably was a different variety, just looking at it, but wasn’t sure. It’s also good in soups and stews cut up into cubes and cooked for about the same amount of time as you would cook potatoes. My Hungarian goulash soup, for instance, towards the end of cooking time gets potatoes, carrots, and celeriac (cut into about the same sized pieces as the potatoes) put into it. (But celariac is fairly strong, so I use a lot less by weight/volume than potatoes. Maybe one small celery root for a pound of potatoes.)

It’s also nice mashed with potatoes.

I find celeriac a bit fibrous for mashing, but it’s one of my favourite (cubed and) roasted foodstuffs. Caramelises really deliciously.

When it’s cooked through, I find it has the same texture as potatoes (at least I don’t notice any fibrous bits). Use the younger, smaller ones.