This week CSA is getting celery. It’s all really big. Bigger than what you get at the grocery store. It’s so big I had to stand across the room to take the photo. I put my rolling pin in there for scale.

Fresh celery has a stronger, more pungent flavor than long stored celery and has more fiber (strings) than store bought. If you quickly sauté this celery to add it to vegetables or sauces, or marinade it in olive oil with lemon or vinegar for a salad, it will tame any bitterness but keep the strong celery flavor. This bean and vegetable soup would be great featuring celery. Or how about making a celery stock? Use this recipe and sub celery for the corn cobs. Risotto is so tasty made with celery stock.

Until you are ready to use this huge celery, how are we going to store this big thing?

I’ll show you. Cut and trim about 1/2 the outer stalks off until the stalk is the size of a store bought celery. The inner part of the plant is more tender and mild. Look at this post to see how to best store it for later. It will keep for at least a couple weeks if you store it properly.

Chop up the outer stalks and leaves to use in the next week or so. It will keep just fine until you are ready to make something like this, subbing celery for beans. Or how about this soup, subbing celery for Bok choy?

Here is a photo all broken down to a reasonable size to store.

And another photo show how you can actually get it all in your refrigerator, it did take a little shoving to get it in the drawer, haha.

Celery Butchery 101. If you want more ideas, ask us at pickup.

Have a great week.

Mo