What to do with celery leaves and leftover celery. Don’t throw them out! Instead, try these 2 easy hacks that will save you money and grocery trips.
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Here’s a tip. You know when you bought all that celery because it was on sale? You know how you had to chop it into sticks and ended up with a giant pile of leaves and skinny yellow-ish pieces?
Or maybe you didn’t eat as much celery as you thought you would. Maybe now you have a bunch of sticks that need to be eaten ASAP, and you don’t have enough ranch dip or peanut butter and raisins?
Don’t throw them out. Instead, try this easy hack that will save you money and grocery trips.
You have two options:
Freeze the Leaves & Yellow-ish Bits
Toss them whole into a freezer bag and freeze them for making 5-Min Broth later. Celery makes a great addition to broth or stock. Keep in mind that the really white and yellow parts can be bitter.
Freeze Leftover Celery Sticks
Simply chop the celery-like you would for soup and put them in a gallon-size freezer bag. Every time you chop more, toss them in the same bag.
Whenever a soup or casserole recipe calls for celery, use your frozen stash!
Now you don’t have to put it on your grocery list, it’s already chopped, and because you were going to throw it away anyway, it’s kind of like FREE.
Soup season means a lot of celery is in our future. Use this quick hack to make it last as long as possible and save you money.
More Money-Saving Produce Hacks:
- Easy Slow Cooker Marinara
- How to Freeze Greens (the Easy Way!)
- 5 Ways to Save Money on Fruits & Vegetables
- Potato Peel Soup
- What to Do with Leftover Juicing Pulp
- How Zucchini Noodles Fit in a Tight Budget
- How to Freeze Tomatoes (The Easy Way)
- How to Freeze Peaches
What You Can Do Now:
What do you do to freeze or preserve fruits and veggies?
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I’ve never thought to freeze celery! Great tip!
Great tip of pre-chopping it before freezing. And thanks for other tips for money saving.
This is perfect! I always feel like I never can use all of the celery I buy and never, ever, have thought of freezing it!
I know what you mean. This helps a lot!
Hi Steph
Don’t know if you’ll read this but just wanted to say thanks for this tip. Just bought a big bunch of celery because it was 3 x times cheaper than the smaller pre-packaged bags. I live alone and food goes off before I can use it. I actually found your site while I was googling to see if I could eat the leaves (getting confused with rhubarb leaves).
So I will be trying this tip and also checking out your site on ways to save on cooking. I’m retired now and on a pension so I want to save money AND help the environment. Cheers from Australia.
Hi Lesley, I’m so glad you this tip helped you! It has saved us a lot over the years (and made soups easier because we nearly always have celery on hand). Thank you for the comment, and let me know how else we can help.
I always buy celery and have leftover stalks that I end up throwing away. Thank you for this helpful tip, I will definately be putting it to use.
Awesome! Glad it will help.
This is a great idea! I love that you have ideas for the celery leaves too!
That is amazing Directions to Freeze Celery. These are amazing Tips.thanks for sharing
I like your article, Great tip of pre-chopping it before freezing. Will try this soon. Thanks for the post.
very nice information about healthy dite
I like your article great work. it’s very nice for health thanks for sharing this with us.
Pre chopping method is new. Thanks for sharing this information .. ! This is gonna rock .! 🙂
This is a great idea. I can’t tell you how many times I have had celery spoil on me. It’s way more fragile than one would think. And not cheap since I buy organic because it is on the Dirty Dozen list.
Glad to hear! I agree. I try to buy only organic celery, so this helps stretch it even further.
I try so hard not to waste and throw away food, and I utilize my freezer ALL the time. But, celery is something that I seem to always end up wasting. Thanks for the tips, I’m definitely going to try this!
You’re welcome! I can’t stand wasting food either.
You can do the same thing with bell peppers and/or onions—I chop the extras when i am prepping for a recipe and throw them in the freezer for soups or omelets .
Yes! Love doing this. Thanks, Carol!
We battle to get soup celery, which is slightly different to table celery, and far more flavousome for soup, all through winter, so last year I decided to experiment. I washed and chopped the celery, then used plastic containers that seal properly, filled them with celery and then topped with cold water, and stuck them in the freezer. When ai needed it, I defeosted at room temp, and used n my soup, water and all. And if I needes for salad, Inused the same method .. and wow .. Crisp Fresh Celery! Soup Celery is actually All Purpose♡
That’s AMAZING! Way to go!
Thanks Steph, wasn’t sure what to do with all the surplus. I always buy a whole celery because it continues growing in the fridge! Then I came across this amazing hack of regrowing your celery. Once I had used nearly all of the stalks (I cut them off about an inch from the bottom) I put the celery in a small amount of water until it grew some roots then I planted it in a big pot on my terrace. I’ve now got a full grown celery plant and can harvest a stalk at a time, not sure how long this will keep going for, but it’s awesome 🙂
Nice!! I love that that hack is working for you! I’ve tried it a few times, but I think I live in the wrong part of the world. It never grows well and ends us tasting very bitter. But regrowing green onions works!
thankyou for celery freezing tips- much appreciated!! right now with the covid 19 issues around the world- we need more tips like yours- avoids buying more. and trips to the store and $$ wasted.
Thank you! I’m glad this helped you stay safe.
Hey Steph,
I just wanted you to know I put your way of freezing celery and the leaves on my Pinterest site so others can save money too. I hope you don’t mind that. Right now during the COVID disaster, we all need the help of one kind or another so I try also to list sites that are helpful for some who have little money to cook with. Thank you for your site!! A lot of folks will find it helpful!
Sharon
Need to blanch celery for longer freezer life.
Yes, good tip!
great post thank you