The retrospective of FYCE offerings continues. This post is from January, 2021:
This is another old-fashioned recipe and may fall under the love it or hate it category. I love it because of the nostalgia factor, my grandmother made this. Another plus is that it is super simple and uses up leftover celery. Recipes always seem to call for ½ cup or less of diced celery, but it is only sold in gargantuan bunches. (Butcher, do you grow celery?)
Melt a stick of butter in a large pan and add (all diced) a bunch of celery, a large waxy yellow potato, and large Vidalia onion. Cook about 10 minutes until the onion is tender, stirring so it does not stick. Add 3 cups of broth – you can use chicken or vegetable stock – and simmer another 10 minutes, until the potatoes are softened.
Pour it all into a large blender, adding a cup or so of heavy cream, and 1/4 cup of chopped fresh dill. This should puree right down into cream soup consistency. You may want to add another cup of broth, depending on the “soupiness” after your initial puree.
Serve with fresh dill sprinkled on top, a small celery stalk, and the sandwich or crusty bread of your choice.
Should you make this? I think so, it is a year-round soup, not just a hearty winter soup, and can be served chilled like a gazpacho in the summer…but I am the only person here who eats it, so I don’t often make it.
Nope, we don’t grow celery. We had thought about it at one point, but we don’t use enough of it to justify our extremely limited garden space. Besides, it’s a pain in the ass to grow. But, this is a good way for us to be rid of the other celery bunch that always comes along with the one bunch we actually want for whatever dish we’re making.
Right? Celery is only sold in huge bundles!
Hell, we don’t even actually need the one whole bunch. Typically we only need a few stalks. I blame Big Celery for restricting our FREEDOM.
YES! As I am rarely allowed to go to the market (I am terrible at going off-list and +$100 every time) I continue to ask why only a few stalks of celery make it home, as opposed to enough celery for soup…
Sounds good but I would skip the puree part because I am not fond of creamy soup. BUT, I am going to bang the celery drum again. I love the crunchy juiciness of it. It is one of those things that, if I don’t have it, my eye starts to twitch. Leftover celery? I don’t get it but OK, toss it in the food processor with an onion and some carrots and fling it in the freezer in 1 cup batches, there is the base for soup, sauce, whatever. Need a quick appetizer? Slather it with peanut butter or cream cheese or serve with a dip. I love it so much I put it in recipes that don’t call for it. Today I made some crazed version of pozole, saute chopped onion and celery, some leftover turkey, some broth, hominy and pinto beans that I soaked overnight and cooked in the morning, red chili sauce that I had in the freezer. Topped with a quick cabbage pickle, it came out really good.
In closing, eat your celery, people!
Celery is a funny vegetable. Depending on how its grown, the flavor profile can have stark differences that are more detectable than with other veggies. It should be sweet, but all too often I find that celery today has a very bitter quality to it–including the organically grown. So, I don’t eat it straight like I used to.
I always smell the stalks before I buy it at the store and people give me weird looks. But mediocre celery does not smell as celery-ey as good celery!
@Sedevilc Most celery from the supermarket is flavorless; when I get it from the local organic CSA it is more edible. I mostly think of it as filler, aside from this soup. And the carnivore only eats it when it is disguised.
I too love celery and think it’s an unfairly maligned vegetable. Braised celery is delicious and raw celery with peanut butter an excellent snack. I think I’d love this as a chilled summer soup!
Not a bad idea to puree it, but I just chop it, blanche it, and freeze it. (I guess celery is one of the veggies that’s supposed to preserve better frozen if blanched for a minute first – carrots are another.)
Is celery even food?
not just food!
Celery has received a lot of attention as a ‘superfood,’ with supporters claiming that celery juice helps combat a range of ailments, including inflammation, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. Celery is a member of the carrot family.
…well, in the terry pratchett books carrot is a dwarf…but he’s also taller than most humans…so I think maybe the carrot family has a tendency to bend the rules?
It’s a good source of fiber (obviously) and it contains so much water that you can eat as much celery as you want and you’ll actually lose weight. The calories burned in the process of consuming it (raw celery, anyway) is far greater than the negligible calories you’ll gain from it. It has vitamins so that also helps.
@MatthewCrawley, your rational arguments mean nothing to the carnivores!
…well…maybe not nothing…but I’ll admit that something that takes more energy to eat than it grants you in return doesn’t sound like the best deal…isn’t that technically less-than-nothing?
Actually the idea of negative calorie foods is a myth. Consuming food does burn a tiny amount of calories, but no food, including celery, has ever been shown to contain less calories than it takes to consume it. If you ate a truly absurd amount of celery, you could gain weight from it.
https://www.stack.com/a/myth-or-fact-you-burn-more-calories-than-you-consume-when-you-eat-celery
As far as I can tell, this myth was promoted by some poorly designed study where a person’s total calories burned was measured while eating celery – but of course that included the base calories burned just by your body at rest.
I’m telling you, Big Celery is out of control.
I’ll take your word for it but I can’t access that link. I went to Stack’s website and…it’s not exactly the JAMA. I don’t eat a lot of celery so I have no personal anecdata to share.
Weird the link doesn’t work. They cite both the Mayo Clinic and the University of Michigan.
It’s just their server, I think, but I got to the home page no problem. Again, I don’t doubt you, it does seem to be too good to be true (but humans wouldn’t last a week on an all-celery diet, calories or no.) I’m always happy to see common myths debunked, even when I’m the one spreading the fake news.
Not only would people not survive an all celery diet, they’d be so sad before they expired.
@Luigi Vuoto not according to most gentlemen of my acquaintance… but this is a very good soup.
…isn’t it that stuff they use for a stirrer in a bloody mary?
…could have sworn that’s what it’s meant to be for
@SplinterRIP – and there it is – I was waiting for someone to mention that celery is only good as a Bloody Mary spoon. Local restaurants vie to add to that; a shrimp, bacon, olives, hot peppers all on a skewer plus the celery in the Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary, the cocktail that is a meal!
So, what you’re saying is that a good meal plan looks like this:
Breakfast: Screwdriver, or Morning Glory
Lunch: Bloody Mary
Dinner: Cosmopolitan
Dessert: Grasshopper or Brandy Alexander
@butcherbakertoiletrymaker, I think you may be right, but an afternoon nap would need to be the appetizer!
Ellie knows I love her but I will never make this soup.
@MegMegMcGee – Love you right back. Celery is such a contentious vegetable!
mmmm i love soups
will try this one soon as a buy myself a blender..(soo probably once i move out and have to buy new pots and pans and everything…no point in making soup for the others anyway…missus doesnt think soup is a meal..and daughter just wants to eat the french stick)
@farscythe, I think of you and your relocation goals – wishing you well. I can send you many soup recipes once you get settled anew.
thank you 🙂
i may well take you up on that
@farcythe I really love soups too. I think it’s silly when people say they think soup is gross? I never understood that.
@Elliecoo this sounds delicious and I think I’ll try it (just subbing nondairy for the heavy cream) Thanks for sharing
@CestLaVie, good! Please do follow up on how it goes for you!!
lol..well the missus doesnt think soup is gross…she just thinks its a starter and could never be more than that
annoys me some….oh well..what can you do
more soup for me 🙂
I can’t see myself choosing to make this as opposed to making a potato soup with celery and carrots, but I would eat it if served to me and would probably enjoy it. I just think it’d be better with more potatoes 😉
@BigDamnHeroes, I understand. While CousinM often says all his recipes are from the 1950’s, this one is definitely a 1930’s depression era recipe – so it may taste sad to others?
This sounds tasty! I just got back from the grocery store and now have onions and potatoes, and I have a big bunch of celery already, so… hmmm…
I made minestrone yesterday, though, so I need to get through that, first. 3 of the 6 people here love soup, and the other 3 only tolerate it, so by the time I get to the bottom of the huge pot, I’m usually sick of soup for awhile!
@HoneySmacks, if you do make, please report back!
Who knew that the humble celery stalk would divide our community in ways not seen since eggplant was last brought up?
@MatthewCrawley, I’m envisioning the leek dance from earlier in the week, but using celery!
Celery: at least it’s not an avocado.
@MegMegMcGee, avocado served with spaghetti, right? 🥑
I love celery and this looks delicious!!!
@brightersideoflife, it is pretty good, if you like celery, the most contentious of vegetables!
Celery is amazeballs and I will gladly consume it for others who don’t care for it!!!
Three years later and I still hate celery.
3 years later and i has a blender now…living situation is still fucked up
might make a few wierdo soups tho…coz fuckit why not