The Ugly Vegetable: Celery Root

Celery Root Salad

Celery root, or celariac, isn’t the best looking vegetable in the market, with its lumpy misshapen form.  I expect it’s a tuber that’s often overlooked.  Seems that a lot of people just don’t know what to do with it!  While it’s great roasted and even mashed with garlic and parsley, I have been using it in the summertime as the main ingredient in a raw salad.  It’s pretty good–it has the grassy flavour of celery, but doesn’t have the fibrous texture.

Wash and peel the celery root (easier than it looks).  Use a sharp knife to peel away the gnarled surface, and you’ll quickly get to the smooth, white interior.  Once you have the celeriac peeled, you’ll need to julienne it.  While you can use a food processor and a grating blade to do the trick (or even the coarse side of a cheese grater), the best and quickest tool for the job is a Japanese Mandoline or Benriner.  This inexpensive tool is awesome for shredding and cutting vegetables into matchsticks for slaws, soups, stir-frys and is a must for making sushi.

Celery root is also cheap.  A good choice for Vitamin C, potassium and phosphorus.  Keep in mind that it’s a slightly starchy vegetable, so it’s a good idea to combine it with a protein and a good source of fat such as olive oil.  Protein, fat and fiber all combine to slow down carbohydrate absorption.

Celery Root Salad:

Peel and cut the celery root into matchsticks.  Shake the olive oil and lemon juice with the other ingredients in a small jar and combine with the cut up vegetable.  Serve over raw baby spinach leaves.

Trust me, this is great.  I didn’t have fresh parsley on hand so I used some dried Herbs de Provence.  If you want to make the salad a bit sweeter, you can throw in a bit of tart apple as well (just slice some with the mandoline as you’re doing the celeriac).

Tags: celery root, recipe