Celery doesn’t keep crisp ceaselessly, so as a substitute of throwing it away, why not attempt freezing your extra celery to make use of at a later date. Right here is a few nice data on easy methods to freeze celery to make use of in meals akin to stews and soups.
Freezing Celery
Although celery could be frozen, there’s a small downfall – it’s going to lose its crispness. Attributable to this, frozen celery is greatest utilized in soups, stews different scorching dishes as consuming it uncooked is simply not going to work. The easiest way to maintain celery for any size of time within the freezer is to blanch it first. This manner it’s going to retain its good high quality for as much as 18 months.
Blanching
Earlier than dehydrating celery, that you must blanch it first. This helps to maintain the stunning inexperienced color of the celery. To blanch the celery:
- Deliver a big pot of water to the boil.
- Wash the celery nicely, reduce off the whitish backside ends and the leafy tops, saving and freezing these for chicken stock, if you want or for making celery salt.
- Reduce the celery stalks into small items, about ½ inch thick crescents, and place them within the boiling water. Go away them there for about 3 minutes, then take away and place in ice water.
- After blanching and cooling, pat the celery utterly dry earlier than you begin the freezing course of.
Freezing
- I prefer to flash freeze the celery first. To do that, unfold out the celery on a baking tray and place within the freezer for a few hours.
- As soon as the celery is frozen exhausting, package deal it into ziplock luggage or vacuum-seal it in pouches in portion sizes. Label and date with the date it was frozen.
Once more, one of the best ways to make use of this frozen celery is straight out the freezer, with out thawing, and popping it into your stews or soups. It should nonetheless add the stunning celery flavour, simply with out the crispness.
