How to Keep Celery Fresh for up to 3 Weeks Longer!

How to keep celery fresh

How to Keep Celery Fresh in the Fridge for Longer

I am so glad I happened upon this little tip about how to keep celery fresh for longer in the fridge. I don’t know how many times I buy celery, use a stalk or two, and then just a few days later it is sad, limp and wilted! So annoying and so wasteful!

However, I love celery. It’s healthy, tasty, and there’s so much you can do with it. You can use it in a salad, eat it on its own, put some peanut butter on it, make soup with it… and the list goes on.

That’s why when I saw this simple hack to keep celery fresh for longer, I just had to try it out. It ended up working so well that I just had to share it here with all of you!

Celery on cutting board

Supplies Needed

This is probably the quickest and easiest trick ever. All you need is some aluminum foil! I wish I had known about it sooner because it only takes a few minutes to do and it could have saved me so much money!

Once you have your aluminum foil and celery ready, cut the ends of your celery and then you’re ready to wrap it!

Celery wrapped in aluminum foil

Wrap Your Celery

Wrap the celery nice and tight with the aluminum foil, but not too tight to where it’s squishing the celery. Once you’ve done that, put the celery in the vegetable/crisper drawer in your fridge.

That’s all there is to it! This little trick works great and extends the life of your celery by about 2-3 weeks!

Wrapped celery in fridge drawer

How Does it Work?

This method seems a bit weird at first right? How come wrapping your celery in aluminum foil keeps it fresh but keeping it in a plastic bag doesn’t?

Well, it all comes down to a bit of science. Like all plants, celery releases a gas called ethylene which helps it ripen. When you keep your celery in a plastic bag, the ethylene gets trapped and causes the celery to over-ripen.

By storing the celery in aluminum foil, the ethylene can still escape but the moisture stays in, leaving your celery crisp and fresh. Pretty cool, right?

Keep celery fresh and crisp

Uses for Celery

Although this will make your celery last longer, it won’t make it last forever! That’s why we’re going to give you some tips on how to use it up. We already listed some ideas above, but here are few more good ways to use celery:

Find all our recipes that use celery here!

How to keep celery fresh and crisp

Conclusion

All in all, this is an awesome way to make your celery last about 2-3 weeks longer in the fridge. That means less food waste and more savings!

Keep in mind this trick won’t make your celery last forever. If it’s starting to look bad, throw it out. Eating spoiled celery could cause you to get sick.

P.S. If you’re wondering how to keep lettuce fresh (and cabbage), you can use the same trick! Thanks for leaving that great tip in the comments, Glenda! Let us know if you have any other food freshness hacks!

More Kitchen Tips:

Keep celery fresh for longer

Types: Food, Remedies, Adult, Family
Categories: Frugal, Home, #StayHome

Comments

  • Works well with lettuce and cabbage as well. Best trick I have ever learned. I love celery but sometimes it gets to be too much. Not any more. The foil keeps it better than anything I have ever tried.

  • Thanks, Glenda, yes, I am finding that it works great!!! Wish I found this out sooner…oh all the money I would have saved :)! Glad to hear it works well for lettuce and cabbage too, thanks!!

  • Tried it on celery and lettuce, and it worked pretty good. Thanks. 😃

  • Good idea, thanks for the tip.

    And, if u cut the bottom off the celery bunch, about an inch, and put root side down in water, leaves will start within a day. I use the leaves as herbs when the recipe calls for celery.

  • You said cut the ends. Does that mean top and bottom or only top? Also, if the celery is crisp and green but the ends are brown at the top, can. I just cut that off? I know celery absorbs, so wonder if it makes the whole thing bad.

  • I have been able to keep a head of lettuce crisp for up to 2 months by wrapping it in paper towels and storing in a plastic ziplock bag. When the paper gets moist, replace it with dry paper towels.

    I keep buying and throwing celery out, so I will try the parchment paper and aluminum foil trick. Thanks for sharing.

    • Yesss! I found out that lettuce trick too! Works wonderfully! I’m hoping that the celery trick works half as well!😉

    • I wrap Romaine, green and red leaf at the bottom in paper towels and place back in the plastic bag from the store. Lasts a whole month fresh as new. Just make sure the end of the bag is open so air gets in and keeps the paper towel from getting too moist cause if it does, it will form rust on the towel and on the lettuce shaft.

  • Don’t know where I got this idea of putting Celery in Aluminum foil, but it works great!! I do not wash the celery before I wrap. I take pieces when I need them & then wash. Also, I cut the bottom of the celery plus cut the celery in half…two separate packages in aluminum foil. Make sure the celery is not wet before wrapping. Also, tried cutting a head of lettuce in half…not washing & then wrap in Aluminum Foil. That works great too. It does get a little brown on the cut part, but going to try & cut in half with a plastic Knife.

  • I saw this months ago and it works well.. I was throwing out celery way too often. Now I wrap the celery in foil and it keeps 3-4 weeks if I don’t use it all sooner. I now buy 2 bunches at a time with no worries. I’ll be trying it on lettuce and cabbage next. Thanks

    • Sweet! Glad to hear you’re loving it! Do come back and let me know how it works for lettuce and cabbage (I suspect it will be terrific!). 🙂

  • Hi ladies I just finished reading your comments on Celery and lettuce and I am trying it right now. Thank you so much! What about carrots?

    • Hi Marnie! I usually just keep my carrots in the bag the come in at the store with no issues… but we do tend to use them fairly quickly. I know if we leave a bag of baby carrots open they tend to dry out. 🙂 Let me know what you found works best for you!

  • Can I leave the leaves on? Use celery a lot in fruit juice,my juicer recipes recommend using leaves too (lots of nutrients). Can I keep them in foil too?

  • Today so many fresh vegetables come in a zip lock bag ex. string beans, carrots, snap beans is it better to store remaining veg. in that bag or another way?

  • I wrap celery stalks tightly in Saran wrap but leave the ends slightly open for the gas to get out. This works at least as good as aluminum foil plus I can see what I wrapped at a glance. Not sure what the obsession with aluminum foil is.

  • I have used the method of aluminum foil. I cut off the leaves and the bottom of the celery stock, I wash the stocks and air dry them on a paper towel. I also wipe the center of the stock with a paper towel, after completely dry, I wrap them in foil! It works great and extends the life of the celery! I’ve tried the method of the lettuce leaves wrapped in paper towels that works good but doesn’t seem to last that long! I’m anxious to try the aluminum foil with the lettuce! Thank you for the helpful hints! Mary Lu

  • So good to hear I can wrap my celery in parchment then foil as I no longer use foil directly on food items.
    Many thanks
    Carol

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