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Celery
Apium graveolens · Vegetable
1 variety40 pairings
Celery (Apium graveolens) is the crisp, ribbed leaf-stalk of a marsh-loving plant in the carrot family, native to the wetlands of the Mediterranean and harvested as a fan of pale-to-mid-green petioles topped with feathery leaves. Snapped raw, a stalk is watery and emphatically crunchy, grassy-green and faintly peppery with a clean, saline-savoury freshness and a whisper of bitterness. Cooked, that sharp herbal bite mellows into a soft, rounded, almost sweet savouriness, which is why celery is one of the three vegetables — alongside onion and carrot — that form the aromatic base of so much of Western cooking. Its smell is unmistakable: a green, peppery, slightly medicinal scent that no other vegetable quite duplicates.
Picking a good onedrag
Squeaky-crisp, tight headLimp, yellowing, splayed
Shop firmThe all-rounder: raw sticks, soffritto, braise, stock.Everyday best
The snapSnaps, but the break looks dry
Cut baseBase tanned, slightly dried out
Ribs and topsRibs matte, leaves limp but green
Smell at the cutFaintly green, mostly neutral
What to look for, from squeaky-crisp, tight head to limp, yellowing, splayed.
What one gives you
89%
Usable yield
40 g a rib · base and leaves off
45 g
Typical weight
one specimen
70%
Juice yield
about 700 ml a kilo
Keeping ittap a band
A domestic fridge holds it about 9× longer than the counter.
Humidity
98-100%
Celery lives on water: bare in a dry fridge a head bends within days, so keep it bagged or boxed where the air stays near saturated.
Airflow
Still air, not sealed
A perforated bag or a loose box: celery wants damp, still air, but sealed airtight in its own moisture the base and outer ribs go slimy.
Yellows and goes pithy near apples
Keep it away from apples, pears and melons: above about 5 C their ethylene yellows the leaves and turns the ribs pithy — white, spongy and hollow.