Nutrition

Celery, much like cucumber, has a high water content. It’s also rich in minerals like potassium and calcium which are important for heart health as well as folate which helps the body to form healthy red blood cells.

Shopping Guide

You want fresh, firm stalks for your celery where they don’t feel or appear to be rubbery.

Storage

To store, wrap a bunch of celery tightly in tin foil and keep in the fridge for up to a month.

Preparation

Try a stick of raw celery with any of your favourite dips. Celery is  not only awesome with dips, but also great in lunchboxes and almost any salad. Try adding along to any spag bol or meatball sauce along with you tomatoes, carrots and onions.

Kids in the Kitchen

For a younger child, why not get them to set up an after-school snack platter with you by popping a dip or two in the middle of a large plate or tray and surrounding it with different cut raw vegetables including celery?

For an older child, it could be a great opportunity to teach some essential knife skills. Show them how to start with a bunch of celery, snap some stalks off, wash them, and then carefully slice using the claw technique into celery sticks or even to slice thinly to add with some onion and carrot to the base of a sauce or stew dish.

Find more ideas for involving kids in the kitchen here.

Sensory

Explore the crunchiness of celery through hearing by getting a few stalks of raw celery, and a few stalks that you have cooked until soft. Try biting the different celeries to hear the difference in crunchiness and softness (or snapping it near your ear if they aren’t ready to eat them). Which one is loud? Which is quiet? Which do you prefer?

Find more sensory ideas, tips and videos here. If you get stuck and need a little help with describing words, we have a selection for you here, too!

Serving

Next time you serve up some celery, see if your child wants to help you make a dip and plate it all up – can they arrange the celery around it so it looks like a sun?

Find the best ways of involving your own child and their skills and interests on our Roles for Kids page.

Activities

Try a celery painting using a stalk dipped in paint (or something edible like ketchup) to make half-circle shapes, or use it for a celery “bark rubbing” to create a fun tree picture.

Kids into science? Try a colour-changing celery experiment: place 3–5 stalks with leaves in coloured water and watch over a few days as the leaves change colour, keeping a short video or log.

Find loads more free veg-themed crafts here, games here or fun at-home science with Stefan Gates here.