No Stupid Questions

Why is it such a common ingredient?

Because it became standard as part of mirepoix, the French base of mixed vegetables for various dishes. As French cooking became highly regarded, it became a standard in a lot of different cuisines.

Celery is genuinely one of my favorite parts of soups that use them. I LOVE the flavor or celery, and it is even better when it picks up the rest of the flavors of the dish.

To answer yours and the other questions about “why this ingredient”, the answer is very simple. Some people like it.

If you don’t, then don’t use it, problem solved.

I think you are an outlier in your palate for celery. Could you have an allergy or something? I like it fine, it tastes good and adds a really nice flavor to stock for soup. If you don't like that flavor just leave it out when you make it, the rest of us might think your dish is missing something but who cares, if the something it's missing is something you don't like?

My penultimate child loves "cooked salted celery" as she puts it - she will rescue it from the stock pot, and likes stir fry of just celery and beef.

I love celery and hate water chestnuts. Everyone's different.

When I make soup my wife always tells me I put too much celery. I never feel like it's enough.

I like celery, but am really interested to learn the answer here. The other ingredient that gets added to everything is onions. Fwiw I know the answer to that one: they're full of sugar. "First, soften some onions..." is basically a way of adding sweetness to food

Yes, I genuinely enjoy the flavor of celery and distinctly miss the flavor when it’s absent. I grew up eating it raw with peanut butter, or melted/spreadable cheese. I grew up thinking it mostly tasted like water and was just a good vehicle for other flavors, but as my palate developed I noticed, and loved, the flavor more and more. In soups especially.

They say it takes something like twelve tries of a new flavor for your body to stop being afraid of it and actually enjoy it, and that most disliked foods are this kind of instinctual rejection. Maybe just try to force it a dozen times? I know that’s not pleasant advice, and I only recommend it if avoiding celery is something that will cause you life difficulties, such as in social situations.

Celery is used because it’s cheap…and it’s bitter balancing onions and other cheap stock items that tend to be sweet. A stock shouldn’t be sweet or bitter because it’s something you “work up”.

“Everybody” doesn’t use it tho. Some stocks are “garbage can” stocks, using whatever unservable scraps that come from food preparation…others are from ingredients purchased to make the stock like a Mirpoix (the most common stock base that uses celery).

There are lots of people like you that say celery ruins stock…there are many others that say bell peppers ruin stock…but then there are core stocks made from bell peppers.

Just do what tastes good.

Do you also think that salt is too spicy?

I feel the same as you, my wife loves celery and puts it on everything but I feel like it subtracts flavors on most stuff. She eats raw celery all the time, I can maybe stand it with a lot of ranch next to some buffalo wings

It fucks