Celery is quite a widespread vegetable in many countries and it is commonly used for different cooking purposes. But what to do if you bought too much celery and you have no plans of cooking it within the next few days?
The optimal choice is to freeze celery, and we will advise how to perform it right!
How Long Does Celery Last Under Different Conditions?
Celery is not only a healthy vegetable as it contains vitamins A, B, K, and C, and many useful elements and minerals that influence positively our body and its systems. No wonder that this vegetable became so popular and is widely used for cooking today! You can use celery leaves, seeds, and stalks when making salads, soups, and stew. You can even eat it raw!
Obviously, prudent housewives may wonder how to keep this vegetable correctly, as well as what the duration of its shelf-life is.
The main significant feature of celery is its crispness and juicy stalks. To preserve these, make sure you keep your celery under proper conditions.
- To make celery remain fresh and crispy, cut off its base and leaves. Then cut the stalks in half and put this chopped celery into a bowl or plastic container. Pour cold water (filtered would be the best) to cover the stalks a bit and close the container using the lid. It is ok to keep your celery like this in the refrigerator for several days and the vegetable will remain fresh.
- There is an easier method. Just take a high glass, pour fresh cold water in it and put your celery in the glass – just as you do with flowers. Remember to cut off its base before you put it in the water!
When being stored this way, celery can last up to two weeks in the fridge.
- Another method is to simply wrap celery stalks into an aluminum foil, only make sure you delete its base part in advance.
How long is celery good for?
As for the duration of its shelf-life, raw celery can remain tasty and crisp for three to four weeks in the fridge after you bought it. Freshly picked celery can be stored for a little longer. Cooked celery lasts about one week. As for the frozen celery, if you blanched it, it can stay in the freezer for several months and up to one year! But if being frozen fresh, it must be necessarily used during the next two months.
Freezing Celery: A Detailed Instruction
Can you freeze celery? Even despite the belief that this vegetable is pretty tricky to freeze, the answer will anyway be yes, you can store celery frozen. In fact, it is the optimal way to keep this vegetable eatable longer.
Nevertheless, freezing has its specifics and frozen celery will more likely have reduced crispness which makes it usable for cooking only but not for eating raw. Also, if you decide to freeze it, it will be better if you slice the celery into the proper size pieces because it is very difficult to cut it after it was frozen.
And now, let’s check out several most handy methods of freezing celery at home.
| Blanched celery | Non-blanched celery |
| In case you want to preserve the celery to the longest, it is required to blanch it in advance.
How to blanch celery? There’s no big deal.
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If you decided to freeze some fresh celery, simply do the following:
Now you can put celery to the freezer and keep it for several months! |
Can you freeze fresh celery like this? Definitely you can! The same as any part of it whether it’s stalks or leaves.
Things to Remember When Freezing Celery
Making celery frozen may seem easy, nevertheless, it is essential to know how to prepare celery for storage if you want it to last longer.
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- Always check if your celery is dry before you put it to the freezer, especially if you blanched it. Dry celery is easier to separate after it’s frozen.
- After you took the celery out of the freezer, use it immediately, don’t let it defrost! Otherwise, it will get a bad odor and get spoiled.
- Never re-freeze your celery as, after it defrosted and frozen later again, it will lose much of its qualities and may even get rotten.
Can you freeze celery stalks?
Yes, you can. In fact, stalks is the most common part of this vegetable to freeze.
Tips For Freezing Some Other Vegetables
Celery is not the only vegetable that can be kept frozen. Another popular vegetable is pepper. Freezing peppers may be tricky as not all of them can be frozen well.
Let’s figure out how to deal with them.
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How do you freeze bell peppers? |
How to freeze red peppers? |
To freeze sweet bell pepper,
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These ones are better not to cut.
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One more very important thing to keep in mind when you are working with hot pepper is to wear gloves. Otherwise, your hands and palms will be burning because of the contact with the hot pepper juice!
