This sautéed celery recipe is cooked with Asian-inspired seasonings like garlic, soy sauce, and rice vinegar. It’s a quick, easy, and nutritious vegetable side dish – packed with flavour and crunch!
1. Is Celery Good Cooked?
You bet! Cooking helps to mellow out the flavours of raw celery, while adding additional flavours from all the seasonings you cook it with.
It also makes celery slightly softer and more tender to eat, but you still keep a bit of that crunch for plenty of texture.
Cooking celery is an awesome way to change things up! And if you’re not a big fan of raw celery, you may be surprised by how delicious this sautéed celery is
2. Sautéed Celery Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 bunch celery
- 1 tbsp olive oil (or other neutral oil)
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tbsp tamari (or soy sauce)
- 1 tbsp rice vinegar
- 2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped (optional)
- Black pepper, to taste
Instructions
Prep: Wash celery stalks + remove any hard or browned ends. Take one stalk and lie it face down on a cutting board. With a chef’s knife, cut down along the stalk in roughly 1/4-inch pieces. I personally like to cut a bit on a diagonal. Repeat until all stalks are cut. You can even cut up the leaves and add them in for a no-waste option!
Mince garlic and roughly chop parsley. Set aside.
Heat olive oil in a large pan over medium-high. When hot, add the minced garlic and cook for a couple minutes, stirring frequently.
Then, add chopped celery to the pan along with soy sauce/tamari, rice vinegar, and black pepper. Cook for approximately 8 minutes, stirring every 30-or-so seconds. Celery should be tender, but still have a good crunch to it!
Turn off the heat and stir in the chopped parsley. Taste and adjust seasonings as desired (you may need a touch more if you have an extra large bunch of celery!) and serve hot.
Note: soy sauce/tamari is a source of sodium, so you may not need to add extra salt to this. Taste and add more salt (or tamari) if necessary and desired!
2. What To Serve This Dish With?
This is a quick vegetable side dish that honestly goes with just about everything. The seasonings for the celery are asian-inspired, so you may want to continue that theme throughout the meal, or just opt for something super simple!
I often practice the “plate method,” where I like to balance my plate with protein, complex carbohydrates or starches, plenty of veggies, and some healthy fats for a nutritionally-balanced meal.
For a protein, it would go great with Salmon, a white fish, shrimp, and tofu
For a starch, I love it with cooked quinoa, farro, or brown rice
