I barely taste celery at all, either raw or cooked. I just eat it for texture. And cilantro? Almost no taste at all; it’s like extremely mild parsley. But any kind of hot pepper? Put me within ten feet of one and my eyes start to water.
I’m lucky in that there are virtually no foods I’ve ever eaten that I dislike. The exceptions would be haggis or Limburger cheese.
Are you out of your gourd?!? Celery totally has a taste–more so raw than when it’s cooked in a stew or any other dish whose flavors it can absorb. And the texture (esp raw) is positively horrific.
Even more outrageous is your allegation that cilantro has no taste at all. It both smells and tastes like b.o. but somehow I’ve acquired an affinity for it :o
I apologize if someone else has already mentioned this (I confess to having skimmed the thread), but some people with hay fever can have an oral allergy syndrome (OAS) reaction to celery. I’m sure there are plenty of people who simply dislike the taste of celery, but if it causes a tingling, itching, or burning sensation in your mouth then that could very well be OAS.
I have that with celery (and many other things), but it only happens when my hay fever is acting up. I grew up in central IN, but now live in south GA. The pollens I’m allergic to in Indiana (cool season grasses and hardwood trees) aren’t nearly as prevalent here in the pine barrens. It’s one reason I stay here in the south.
My problem, exactly. I am right now making a recipe which requires three sticks of celery; to get those, I had to buy a whole packet of the stuff. Ten more sticks, unused; which normally I would put in the fridge, thinking “maybe they’ll do for another recipe a bit later on – maybe I’ll use some of them for salad” (only I’m not basically a salad fan). Most likely, the whole lot would stay in the fridge for weeks, till going “off” even in there, and having to be junked.
In this particular instance – in a few days’ time, I’m off for a stay with some highly-veggy-oriented relatives: I’m sure they’ll welcome the surplus celery. Otherwise; for these reasons, I find celery an annoying foodstuff.
I don’t mind it but I find it hard to eat the whole the whole head , it goes bad before I can finish. I didn’t realize it has so many health benefits so I may start eating it again. I like it in homemade soups and chicken salad .
You can always freeze extra celery if it’s going into the stockpot eventually. I have a perpetual freezer bag of veggie ends and scrap (onion peels, slightly soggy tomatoes, etc), and the root end of the celery along with the little core pieces goes in.
Also, I’m making a sort of borscht for dinner, and used half a bunch of celery in it because I had no cabbage. We likes our celery, too.
I used to be “meh” about celery whether cooked or raw. Then Mistermage bought a couple plants for my raised beds and, oh my!!, fresh stuff tastes great! None of the bitter and all of the flavor. But they do still have strings.
The first year I dehydrated what was left at the end of the season and my boys really enjoyed the bits in soups. The second year I dehydrated just the leaves for my own celery salt. The stalks got ate up so no leftovers for dehydrating. The 3rd year we grew a couple extras and I dried more leaves for my seasoning mix, after a rain everyone was going out to the boxes snapping off stalks (saving the leaves for me), and the stalks at the end of the season got to “star” in Mistermage’s and his BFF’s salsa with a small amount getting diced and frozen.
These plants don’t look like grocery store celery… they spread out a bit. They do require watering if the rain doesn’t happen.
Yeah, cucumbers are terrible. BUT what makes them better than celery is that they ate so bad that I WILL pick them out of my food and not ever have to taste it.
I don’t see the point of anyone trying to convince people that a food tastes good when they say it doesn’t.
Sure, I’ll encourage people to try things, so they’ll have more things to choose from to eat, but, if you don’t like something, you don’t like it. No big whoop.
And you are precisely the person I don’t get. I believe you, but I just don’t understand how you can’t taste it. If it tasted like nothing, I’d eat more, if only a conduit for other foods. But it tastes “grassy” to me, for lack of a better term.
Can you at least taste it in cooked foods, when used to flavor them? I find it tastes the same, just stronger, which, when mixed with the right foods, tastes good.
I love celery but do not care for celery seed (or salt) at all. I love coleslaw and potato salad with BBQ, but so many places are scratched off my list because of this. I wouldn’t mind if they used a little, but they never do.
I can understand the OP, though I like celery. I have a very similar aversion to mushrooms.
Once after Thanksgiving I was making turkey soup. I had no celery and the grocery store was out of it.
I went to a few bars knowing that they served Bloody Marys (with celery in them) and begged for them to just sell me some celery. Can’t have turkey noodle soup with out celery.