I have a bunch of celery in the fridge about to go bad. This sucks, because I hate wasting food.
At the same time, I’m not a fan of eating raw celery sticks; that “negative calories” thing is bullshit, by the way. I swear on a stack of bibles that I’ve never said the following: “Gosh I’m hungry. I know, crunchy flavorless water sticks! That would totally hit the spot right now!” Even peanut butter “boats” or “ants on a log”, or whatever other stupid celery dress-up tactic people use, I see through it. The base is still the same crap.
To completely contrast that, I LOVE cooked celery! I think it brings such a distinct flavor to dishes. In fact, I believe that cooking celery unlocks its MAGICAL FLAVOR POWERS!! Thanksgiving stuffing wouldn’t be the same without celery, soup would be sub-par, and ANY Cajun or creole dish would be lost without good old reliable celery.
Why do I have all this celery? I have it because I bought it to use 3 stalks in split pea and ham soup. At the time it seemed like a good idea. I didn’t realize that I should have also considered my future with all this celery. It’s not like you can buy it by-the-stalk; it’s typically packaged in a bundle, so you’re either forced to learn to like raw celery, or cook it all at once….in some ridiculous only-cooked-celery dish.
But I had an epiphany: freeze that shit! I CAN PUT MY CELERY INTO A STATE OF SUSPENDED ANIMATION!!! Then I don’t need to go out buying and wasting celery every time I want to make soup, jambalaya, or gumbo! I’ll have FROZEN celery at the ready!!
But wait….can I even freeze celery? It is possible?!!? I know not everything freezes well….so what’s the verdict on celery????
TELL ME, INTERNET!!!!!
So I Googled “freeze celery”, and at the top search result I abandoned all hope:
*HEADDESK*
REALLY?!!? You couldn’t even get the subject spelled correctly in the tagline? CEKERY?!?! You’ve got to be fucking kidding. YOU’RE THE TOP RETURN ON GOOGLE!! 1) HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THIS?!? AND 2) HOW DO YOU MIS-SPELL YOUR MAIN TOPIC?!?! You could misspell the rest of your post, and it wouldn’t be as egregious an error as mis-spelling “celery” when celery is what you’re talking about!!
So instead of running off to industriously freeze some celery for future soups and/or stews, I’m weeping in the corner for all humanity.
If it turns out that there is a way to freeze the stuff, I’ll get back you.
UPDATE – It turns out you CAN freeze celery, at least according to sources other than the link above, which I couldn’t bring myself to click. Chowhound says so. It sounds like you can freeze it like you would onion or pepper: chop first, spread pieces out on a tray, and freeze. Once frozen, dump sub-zero celery chunks into a freezer bag and store. Freeze bits separately unless you WANT ONE LARGE MASS of frozen celery.
UPDATE AGAIN - Post-frozen celery is totally use-able and edible. I threw some straight from the freezer bag and into the pot for Jambalaya, and holy shit, you wouldn’t know the celery wasn’t freshly cut before cooking! Future celery usage is looking bright.
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