Celeriac Recipes for the Winter

One of the staples you can look forward to finding in our CSA and in stores during the winter is celeriac, the rootball of a variety of celery plant. It is versatile, flavorful and can shake up your diet and perk up your standard recipes.

It comes from the same species (Apium graveolens) as celery stalks, but has been bred for creating the large, edible rootball instead of the stalks. The family Apiaceae also includes parsley, carrots and parsnips.

You can eat celeriac raw or cooked, so I think of it a lot like fennel bulb. Both of these can be shaved to make a coleslaw or to add to a tossed salad, or you can cook them. In both cases you get lots of flavor!

Celeriac also behaves a lot like potato, so you can replace all or some of the potato in your recipe and reduce the carbohydrate content while increasing the flavor profile of the whole dish. Celeriac has one third as many carbohydrates per serving as potatoes. In this way, it is a lot like using cauliflower to replace rice or potatoes in recipes.

So here are some ways to use celeriac. I am considering creating the Hasselback Celeriac for our Thanksgiving dinner.

Hasselback Roasted Celeriac

This recipe comes from Modern Food Stories and looks amazing. All it requires is long cooking, a vinaigrette dressing and herbs.

Quick Celery Root Salad with Capers and Lemon

This salad is like a coleslaw and very easy to make. Requires some capers from your pantry and lemons on hand. Go to the Kitchn for the instructions.

Sauteed Celeriac

Actually, this sounds so good that I might make this for Thanksgiving. No one will know how easy it was! Cube the root, sautée for 6 minutes, steam for 6 minutes and dress with vinaigrette.

Celeriac Soup

This recipe is more involved than the others, but not difficult. Think of it as creamy potato soup, but with celeriac. I have made something like this before and highly recommend!