That would be nice. Wonder if they offer organic?

I would not want a milder flavor for cooking, that is for sure. Celery already has a mild flavor and it is a great addition to many recipes.

Sigh. I get it. But I don't want my vegetables mucked with! I want acidic tomatoes, sharp onions, and, yes, stringy celery. The regular organic celery we get isn't as stringy as I remember celery being from years ago, but it's also small ribbed, so perhaps that's why.

Plllog, I only buy organic celery and it all has strings ... at least the outer ribs do. It gets less stringy as you get closer to the core.

I want acidic tomatoes, sharp onions, and, yes, stringy celery.

Me, too. It's so frustrating that all the newer veg varieties keep getting sweeter and sweeter. However, as CindyMac says, if I buy organic celery in the store it's fairly stringy, if I don't buy just the hearts.

I usually grow my own celery but that has so much more flavor you don't need much in a recipe, so for something like chicken salad where celery provides a lot of the bulk, I still occasionally buy store celery, too.

Like plllog, I don't want my vegetables messed with. Every time they get "improved" to increase shipping time or make them sweeter, more tender, easier to eat, etc., they lose flavor, they lose nutrients and somehow, they become more expensive. I want mine left stringy, thanks. Everyone who wants to eat them should feel free to do so, I'll keep my strings.

Michigan was, apparently, the birthplace of the celery market, started by some Dutch Farmers around Kalamazoo. There's still a Celery Museum in Portage, LOL.

Annie

Who knew there is a "Celery Museum"!

I know it's not from regular celery but I like to use celery seed along with the cut up stalks in salads.

I bought a bag of celery hearts from Costco last week. I didn't know there were celery hearts. I always buy the celery as a whole head.

Now that you mention it, there aren't many/any strings. It must because that it's hearts. It was a good price, nowhere near the $5 for a head of celery in the stores.

5$!!! Gosh, I just paid $1.49 for a head of celery in Publix yesterday. Organic was $1.99. Where are you, Jasdip?

Cathy, I've never been there. But I've never been to the Spam Museum either, and I know there's one of those in Minnesota, you betcha! (grin) I always put celery seed in my coleslaw, and I have a recipe for relish that calls for celery seed too.

I don't know if it's the growing season or they soil or the variety, but some seems very stringy and some seems less stringy. The middle pieces/hearts have strings, but they are more tender and less noticeable.

I also like celery braised or creamed as a vegetable side dish, but few people do that anymore.

Annie

I didn't say my celery had no strings. Just that the organic, large whole head celery I buy nowadays is less stringy than the regular celery we used to get a couple of decades ago. But it also seems younger.

Celery is not oddly salty...it is naturally salty. A number of vegetables have sodium...spinach and chard have a higher content than celery.

I always thought that one of the reasons celery is so good in mirepoix is the natural saltiness it brings.

I only buy organic celery, and I want the whole head, not just the heart. Same with Romaine lettuce. I like the outer leaves on the lettuce and the outer stalks on the celery. To me, when the sell only the hearts, they've cheating you of half the head.

I'd want to know, and of course, they won't tell you, if this new version of celery is gmo. (Another hot topic on this forum!)

Sally

I just bought seeds for growing Chinese celery this season.

5 times (?) the celery flavor.

dcarch

Celery is on the top ten list that you should buy organic. I always taste first when using any celery. Can often be very bitter so i compensate with a bit more citrus/and or a bit of sweet like maple syrup. (i only recall once this past year getting a horribly bitter bunch)...

I should pay attention to the grower/supplier as the recent celery has been so good.

I almost always use it chopped fine, small dice, so i've never de-stringed, but do love the big flavor it has when especially good like i've bought recently.

In the garden i grow par-cel, a big leafy variety crossed with parsley. What results is a big bunch of chopstick sized stems with concentrated celery flavor and a ton of leaves.

I use a lot of celery so it is always on the shopping list. Another trick is to cut off the root end and rest it in water...rinse every few days and it will sprout. After a few weeks i plant it along with green onion ends and leek root ends. All are sitting in a shallow glass container on my kitchen shelf above my prep area. (not in direct sun). In the spring all goes in the big wide deck container just outside the kitchen and grows all summer for snipping.

I've not seen anything Dole that is organic so i avoid Dole. I could be wrong. And new varieties can be even better flavor but not often from the big-boy suppliers. They search and grow for shelf stability ignoring flavor. Dole just had a big salad recall and shut a plant down to deal with it. The culprit is often 'microbial soup'...using contaminated water for the rinse. Then bagged at room temp where the bacteria quickly multiplies. Heat will kill it but salad is used fresh...yuck.

If i need celery for crudite and it is tough and stringy i guess i may de-string it but i would most likely just serve the inner heart if it is more tender. Or not use it all for that and just use it for miropoix.

dc, where did you get your seeds? I'm alway looking to try new things. especially something i love so much...like celery.

sleevendog (5a NY)

dc, where did you get your seeds? I'm alway looking to try new things. especially something i love so much...like celery.

Kitazawa Seed Co.

If you are interested in making eating vegetables enjoyable and delicious. A ton of interesting stuff.

dcarch

Writersblock, I'm in Ontario. Our groceries and produce is taking a butt-kicking this year because our dollar is very low. Almost worthless, so if you all want to travel to Canada, this is the year to do it!!!

Cauliflower has just recently fallen to affordable levels. From $6 head to as low as $2, so I've been stocking up. Celery is $4.99 head everywhere, and since the one at Costco was $5.50 for a 2.2 lb bag (1 kg) already washed, I bought it.

Sally, I can't guarantee, of course, but I'm betting that the new less stringy celery is a hybrid, rather than genetically modified. I can't promise that, of course, but if it's labelled organic it should also be GMO free. I've not heard of celery being genetically modified yet, but hybridization has been around for a lot of years. The problem with hybrids is that you cannot save the seeds and replant, they seldom grow true to type. That, of course, compromises biodiversity, and so I try to grow heirlooms and save the seeds, so that types do not become so rarely grown that they are unavailable. The lack of biodiversity is what caused the great Potato Famine, you know.

Annie

I have no problem with strings in celery, but then I always chop it, and so it doesn't matter. If I were serving it whole, that might be a different issue, but I use it almost exclusively in cooking. I read somewhere that you should definitely buy organic celery, as the non-organic celery has some of the highest contamination. I always buy it at the farmers' markets, whenever I go there, as they do not chop off the leaves, and I love using the leaves. I sometimes use the leaves as a substitute for parsley, but right now I have a ton of parsley in my back yard, as it grows extremely well in the winter (like dill and cilantro), but winter is almost over, and I've had to switch back to A/C already. I hope the rain comes back.

My mother used to put chopped celery in salads, but I generally do not do that, for some reason. I think it's because it tends to fall to the bottom of the salad bowl.

Lars, if you slice the celery really thin it won't sink to the bottom of the bowl.

I like to keep a container of celery and carrot sticks in the fridge. They're great with hummus.

Wow, Jasdip, those are some harsh prices.

One thing I don't understand is that I live in FL in an area where all kinds of vegetables are in commercial production now, but all the produce in our stores is from California. Maybe they're sending ours up to you?

Writer, a lot of our produce comes from California and Mexico. A lot of it just says Product of U.S. so it could be anywhere. So between the Cal.drought and our loonie, we're paying big-time!

I paid $6.10 for a head of celery last week.(Not organic) It was $1.99 a pound. Which was a deal, because the other grocery store that I shop at had it on at $3.99 a pound.

Writersblock, I'm in FLA too and just bought a large organic stock for $1.99 @ # at a local family owned stand.

It certainly was cheaper than Whole Foods.

I haven't grown celery in a while; I should get some going as it's the right time of the year.

Yeah, you can get local at some of the family stands, but outside of the green market , which is only once a week, there never seems to be any organic local celery in my area, mustangs. If you haven't grown it before, try Tango celery. Doesn't make such large stalks as Utah, but much better flavor.

But with the weird weather this winter I'm not having as much luck with any variety of celery as I generally do.

Celery is grown with a lot of pesticides. Not sure about the gmo. If the public shows no resistance to adding the "Roundup Ready" gene to foods, then it will spread from plant to plant as they "come on line" as they say. It's a real boondoggle if you ask me. I'm not against genetic modification, I'm against modifying food plants to resist glyphosate, so they can blast stuff with it. And this is coming from someone who ROUTINELY uses glyphosate at work, so I'm not against using that either. But the more it is used, the faster resistance will evolve. Biology 101. Making it a mandatory part of the crop's culture isn't following integrated pest management best practice procedures. OK enough soapbox, I always feel I have to add the qualifiers!

Having said that, I hate stringy celery so I'd be willing to try it, but organic only. Celery is one of the few vegetables I'll spring for organic on. I will say this, the quality of celery in the store is routinely very poor, IMHO. I have never tried growing it, I think it is fiddly.

FWIW, I got seeds for a Chinese celery called Nan Ling from Pinetree seeds - super easy to grow in containers. It's got thin, tender stems & lots of leaves - not a lot of crunch, but great celery flavor. It also produced lots of seeds. One of those veggies you need only buy seed for once.

http://www.superseeds.com/products/nan-ling-celery-95-100-days

Carol, Thanks for the heads up.

I have grown the cutting leaf celery...it does nicely in a pot outdoors and transitions indoors over the winter just fine. Makes a really pretty plant that looks very similar to flat leaf parsley. Great intense celery flavor for soups, etc.

If you're starting it from seed, be aware that the seeds are tiny and it is very slow to get going. But once it starts to mature, it is a very robust plant.

Sleevendog thanks for saying that about bitter celery! Is it odd that I've never noticed it before? I recently threw out a head that was just awful figuring it must have been bad. Almost posted about it at the time, to ask.

I make a point to try and buy the celery with larger ribs. I find the bitter ones bitter.

I can't imagine paying $1.99/pound, much less $3.99/pound for celery. I think I pay somewhere around $2.98/bunch for organic celery at Central Market in Dallas. Oddly, Whole Foods rarely has it.

I used to de-string it, but it seemed that no matter how much I de-stringed it there were always more strings, so I quit before I had a pile of confetti and no celery stalk left. lol.

I don't care if it falls to the bottom of the bowl, and yes, it does, (along with the chopped carrots and other stuff I add to the salad) I still love the crunch it brings to my salads.

Edited to add, which I forgot to before, I'm glad it's not GMO, but a hybrid. Any more, it seems almost everything's GMO, and like LPink, I don't fancy eating my food with a topping of Glyphosate.

Sally

Supermarket celery is dreck. The best comes from local farmers. It's like night and day. And what's the deal with "strings'? That's what you've got teeth for.

For eating raw it's easy enough to pull a few strings. Makes for a nicer eating experience.

This thread reminds me of a visit home many years ago and a dinner that included string beans. My dad, dh, and I all had a tiny pile of strings on our plates after eating. My mom didn't have a single one. Still makes me smile.

RE: the strings - some people have dental work & things like that can be problematic.

Just to be precise, glyphosate does not stay on the plants for long, it is broken down into other constituents. Whether they are problematic or not, the jury is still out. They are becoming extremely widespread, that much is suspected and preliminary research shows that. I prefer to err on the side of caution, and since I use it and want it to work for non-agricultural purposes for as long as possible, I think it should be used judiciously. But sorry, that's not a celery issue! I end up mostly using only the hearts even when I buy the big organic bunches. Celery is quite the luxury these days!

I like strong celery flavor so i probably wouldn't want it. People look at me strangely when I'm grabbing the celery leaves first when adding to a dish. (You don't throw them away?????) I give them a piece and say taste it. They're usually amazed.

Depends on the dish whether I'll de-string it. Sometimes I'll pull some of them but not get obsessive about it.

Celery is an under-appreciated ingredient IMO.

cynic, I agree, I think celery is very under-appreciated, as is cabbage, which is a whole 'nother thread. I like celery raw or cooked, and I'm going to plant some lovage, Nancy/wizardnm brought me some, and it tastes very much like celery too.

I just stopped at a neat little farm market in Ionia called McCord's, they had cauliflower for $1.19 a head, broccoli for 99 cents a bunch and celery was $1.49 a stalk. Not local, clearly, since this IS February in Michigan, and not organic, unfortunately, but certainly not $4 or $6 a pound!

Annie

Celery definitely adds umami flavor!

Thanks for the two seed sources. Carol and dcarch. I have been planting a variety that i plant deep in a trench, then cover with peat as it grows. It does ok but such a short growing season it is never full stalks. (i just pick at it all summer).

I see a few varieties that i think would do well.

Shocking to find out that a very good friend hates celery, lol. I use it in everything. Not until we were better friends that i found out. Also hates rhubarb and ripped out an entire row that i had admired. (i could have easily transplanted all of it in my garden. He does not know that i use it in many of my sauces). Fantastic in bbq sauce and he loves that.

The rhubarb was planted by his grandmother!

Celery adds flavor alright, but I don't think it's umami.
Celery was on special last week, $.99 a head....not organic...but $.99?

I didn't think so either, about the celery and umami, so I looked it up and it's on a lot of the lists of umami foods. There are specific chemicals that create umami, and also which combine for heightened flavor. Generally, what creates it in vegetables is glutamate (glutamic acid). An article ranking foods' glutamate content had celery as "low", but it was still enough to be listed. Another article that was mostly over my head on biochemical compounds listed the combination of mirepoix and beef as a "synergistic" umami situation, where the specific combination brings heightened umami through the relationships between the glutamate in the veg and the "---tides" in the meat. Or something like that.

Personally, I don't find celery to have that "earthiness" that is often a descriptor of umami, that is obvious in tomatoes, mushrooms, parmesan and browned beef, but there are at least a dozen kinds of umami.

BTW, there was also a study about the relative umami in different parts of the tomato, and it said something important. I've always wondered why people seeded tomatoes for cooking, because they were throwing away so much flavor. Science shows I'm right. :) Apparently, that's where a large part of the umami is!

I recently purchased this new Dole celery and was surprised to find that it seems to cause extremely bad gas, abdominal cramps and mild diarrhea. I have no problems with other celeries. I am very suspicious of Dole's no GMO claims. They spent over a million dollars fighting the GMO labelling initiative in California. If they only grow non GMO crops why would they not want to take advantage of being able to advertise that fact? Or perhaps the celery is being treated with some unpleasant pesticide/herbicide mix? I would very much like to to know the cause of my problem and until I do I will be avoiding all Dole produce.