When it comes to tasks we’d “normally” do after a first frost, processing our celery is on that list. But, there’s no particular benefit to doing so, it’s more of a “time” thing. So, we harvested and processed it today!
We always forget just how much work it is to process several dozen celery plants! Lots of manual processing, standing and working with a food processor! We’re not even done yet and it’s definitely taken it out of us!
We generally harvest celery whenever it’s needed in the early season, but the overwhelming bulk of our crop is destined towards late season preservation like this. We use our standard blanch and freeze preservation technique for celery and it works great! We burn through a lot making our stocks and such, but having freshly preserved home grown celery around is a decided advantage in our kitchen.
We always grow standard Utah variety celery, it’s pretty much the gold standard in home garden celery production. We also enjoy red or pink celery, just to give things a bit of color. There’s a little bit of taste difference between the varieties, but not enough that you’d notice it. When it comes to preservation, we just mix everything up for a wonderful menagerie of colorful, tasty celery.
We’re looking forward to getting done with this process here and getting a little bit of rest for the evening! So, I’m going to leave it there! We’re going to link to our article on blanch and freeze preservation in the comments, just in case you haven’t caught it!
