Celery is a garden plant widespread in our area. The most famous is leaf celery. It has long been used in cooking as a spice in both fresh and dried form. Another type of celery is grown for the sake of fleshy, juicy petioles. More recently, in our gardens and, accordingly, tables appeared root celery. These are large, round-shaped, brownish-white root vegetables with dense pulp and a specific celery aroma.
What can be made from celery? From it you can cook a full dinner of three dishes: a salad of celery stalks, a soup of root celery, a vegetable side dish. Lunch can be vegetarian or meat, but the addition of this spice will add flavor and piquancy to any dish. Soup “with celery” or “from celery” are two different recipes. Celery in small quantities is added to salads, vegetable soups, meat and vegetable stews, along with other spices or in equal proportions with other vegetables. In the second - celery is the main and main determining taste of the dish.
Celery soup , the recipe of which we offer, is the second case. It will require a quarter of the root crop (about 200 grams), beef meat on the bone,
potatoes, carrots, onions, tomatoes, turnips or rutabaga, a little vegetable oil, sour cream, spicy greens, salt to taste, black pepper, bay leaf.
This celery soup, the recipe of which includes many vegetables, however, it is difficult to call vegetarian: it is cooked on a good meat broth.
Pour one and a half liters of water into the pan. We need a rich broth, so in cold water we put meat, bay leaf, chopped onion in half, black pepper. After boiling, the meat should cook for about 2 hours. During this time we cook vegetables. Three carrots, turnips (or rutabaga) on a coarse grater and sauté in vegetable oil. Add chopped tomato (or tomato paste) to the same pan. We cut celery in small cubes and lower them into the resulting vegetable mixture. Stew until soft.
We take out the boiled meat from the pan, filter the broth and put it on the fire again. In the broth we put peeled and diced potatoes, cook it. When it is almost ready, add the vegetable mixture to the pan and boil the potatoes. Serve hot. Cut the meat and put it in each soup plate. Pour the soup, season with sour cream and sprinkle with finely chopped herbs.
Tomato or tomato paste can be replaced with citric acid (add a little to the already prepared soup), white dry wine (pour half a glass into a pan with sautéed vegetables) or juice of half a lemon (add it already to the plates).
Such a vegetarian celery soup, the recipe of which does not include meat, can be prepared in twenty minutes. If you exclude potatoes from the ingredients, and add kohlrabi cabbage, cut into strips, then it can be recommended for a diet for weight loss. Experience shows that soup with a large number of vegetables is more likely to eat puree, so we grind it with a blender.
Celery has many beneficial properties, contains a large number of minerals and vitamins that our body needs. Nevertheless, it should be used with great care in clinical nutrition . In some cases, a vegetarian celery soup is recommended, the recipe of which does not include acidic products (sour cream, tomato paste, tomatoes). In a saucepan, cubes of root celery are stewed with vegetables. Then hot water is added. Instead of root, you can use petiole, juicy pieces become soft in 5 minutes. A mixture of low-fat cream and flour and one raw beaten egg is poured into an almost ready soup in a thin stream. Served hot with greens and toast.