Celery heart rewards a little know-how: how to choose it, cook it, store it, and substitute in a pinch. Browse 12 recipes to cook with it.

What is celery heart?

The celery heart is the pale, tender cluster of inner stalks at the center of a celery bunch, sheltered by the tougher dark green ribs on the outside.

Those inner ribs grow shaded from the sun, so they stay light yellow-green, more delicate, and noticeably milder and sweeter than the stringy outer stalks.

Most bunches you buy already have the heart inside. Some stores also sell celery hearts on their own, two or three trimmed clusters in a pack, for cooks who want only the good part.

How to Use It

The heart is celery at its most eatable raw. The crisp, nearly stringless ribs are what you want on a relish tray, filled with cheese or peanut butter, or sliced thin into a salad where raw celery's bitterness would otherwise stand out.

Don't toss the pale leaves at the top. They're tender and full of flavor, so chop them right in.

Cooked, the heart melts faster and sweeter than outer stalks, which makes it a quiet workhorse in soups and braises.

It dices into the aromatic base of a Navy Bean Soup (Vegan) or a Jokai Bableves (Bean Soup a la Jokai), and it folds into stir-fries like a Kohl's Oriental Stir Fry and Grandma's Hamburger Chop Suey, where you want celery's crunch without woody strings.

For an old-fashioned side, braise whole or halved hearts in stock with butter until silky, then finish with parmesan. It's a simple dish that punches well above its effort.

Pairings and What to Watch

Celery's clean, slightly bitter green flavor is a natural partner to onion and carrot, the trio at the base of most soups and stocks. It also loves butter, cream, parmesan, walnuts, apple, and blue cheese, which is why it shows up in everything from potato salad to a Waldorf.

The mistake to avoid is wasting the heart on long, hard cooking where any celery would do. Save it for raw use and quick cooking, and send the tougher outer stalks to the stockpot, where their stronger flavor and sturdier texture are actually an asset.

A second thing to watch: those pale inner ribs still hide grit down in the cupped base. Rinse between the stalks, since soil collects where they meet the core.

What to Use Instead

If you don't have a celery heart, the inner stalks of any regular celery bunch are the same thing. Just pull off the dark outer ribs and use the light ones, peeling any strings with a vegetable peeler.

For raw crunch in a salad, fennel gives a similar snap with a mild anise note, or use bok choy stems.

For the celery flavor in cooked dishes, celeriac (celery root) or a pinch of celery seed both carry the taste, though neither gives you the fresh crunch. Lovage, if you grow it, tastes like an intensified celery and works in soups.

Buying and Storing It

Choose hearts that feel firm and snap cleanly, with tightly packed pale ribs and fresh, perky leaves. Limp stalks or leaves that have gone yellow and slimy mean the bunch is past its best. A faint sweet, grassy smell is a good sign.

Store celery hearts in the crisper drawer, and keep them crisp by wrapping the bunch in aluminum foil rather than the plastic sleeve it came in.

Foil lets the ethylene the celery gives off escape while holding in moisture, so a wrapped bunch can stay crunchy for two to three weeks, far longer than in plastic.

If stalks do go limp, they're not lost. Trim the ends, stand them upright in a glass of cold water in the fridge, and they'll drink their way back to crisp within a few hours.

Quick facts

In Chinese

芹菜对心脏

British (UK) term

Celery heart

en français

coeur de céleri

en español

corazón de apio

Recipes using celery heart

There are 12 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 12 recipes