How to Freeze Celery

I’ve been growing celery for several years now and just love how flavorful it is. The only down side is that there’s always more than we can keep up with but we certainly don’t to waste it. What’s the answer? Preserving it, of course! Today, I’m going to show you how to freeze celery.

If you’re wondering why you’d want to go to this trouble, I’m here to tell you that it’s very simple and it will provide you ready access to chopped celery for the soups, stews and casseroles you make this fall and winter.

I also have to let you in on the reason I grow my own celery: do you ever buy celery at the grocery store, use a few stalks, then forget about the rest of it only to later discover it’s turned to mush? (yuck) Since I only harvest individual stalks from my celery plants, nothing ever goes to waste. “Aha!” you say. “There’s a good reason right there to grow my own!” (yup)

Here are the steps for freezing celery:

1. Pick celery stalks. I use a knife to slice them off at the soil level and I only harvest the outer stalks and not the center ones because that would cause the plants to stop producing stalks.

 

 

 

 

2. Wash them. Place your harvest into a sink full of cold water and, using a kitchen scissors, snip off the leaves at the top of each stalk. Put those leaves into a bucket so you can add them to your compost pile later.

 

 

 

 

3. Chop them. Now comes the chopping part. I like to use our “slicer-dicer-chopper” tool, but if you don’t have something along those lines, just use a sharp knife to cut them into manageable-sized pieces.

 

 

 

 

4. Freeze them. Put them into quart- or gallon-sized freezer bags, label them and pop them into the freezer. You will be so thankful to have the pre-chopped celery on hand when you’re cooking!