Make It How You like It

Celeriac purée is a chameleon side dish that can be made thick as a chip dip, for topping fish or roasted veggies, it can easily be modified into a delicious dressing, or forget pureeing altogether and just enjoy the chunky fragrant celeriac sauté!

If you haven’t had celeriac, it’s the meaty bulb of celery stalk. Through it has a strong celery flavor, it’s also very creamy and becomes sweet and fragrant when cooked. You’ll notice that  towards the end of the sauté, the mixture will take on a sweet, almost apple like scent.

Try Yin Yang Celeriac Purée with your favorite chips – perhaps with a fresh batch of Deliciously Crispy Beet Top Chips – or spoon it over a tender white fish like Halibut. It’s also delicious with roasted sweet potatoes and steak, or get creative and make it to accompany this festive Beet and Spinach Salad.

Cooking Notes

Skins

If you haven’t worked with celeriac, you’ll find that this somewhat unusual root veggie comes covered in a web of roots and hair like fibers. You don’t have to remove them to cook and eat this veggie, but there’s often a bit dirt caught up in the roots. You can use a veggie brush to scrub the surface, or just shave off the outside as I did in the prep photo above.

Sauté

Place the garlic into the hot oil first and let it get golden brown (about 1-2 minutes) before adding the onions and reducing the heat to sauté the mixture. This will give the dish a roasted garlic flavor!

Extra Virgin Olive Oil works well with this recipe because you’re not working with prolonged high heat. Avocado oil or butter are good alternatives.

Bone Broth

Make this dish extra healthy by adding Homemade Bone Broth to the sauté or consider stocking up on Epic’s Homestyle Savory Chicken Bone Broth. Although nothing compares to homemade broth, Epic are some of the best and most affordable readymade bone broths out there. Avoid the Kettle & Fire broth – the stuff doesn’t taste anything like bone broth.

Cream

This recipe is dairy free, but feel free to add a dollop of cream to your purée! Quite obviously, this will make it creamier. It’s delicious both ways.

Dressing

For the salad dressing you need one special ingredient to make this fabulous dressing really rock: Za’atar. This Spicely Za’atar is incredibly delicious and gluten free! It’s not a big package, but worth every penny.

Otherwise, just add roughly an equal amount of water to pureé, some fresh olive oil, honey, lemon juice and a dash more black pepper. Mix by hand to retain the crunchy texture of the spices.

Pour the dressing over any salad, lightly wilted spinach, roasted root veggies, or other plain sautéed hearty greens. Try it over plain grains like quinoa, amaranth or millet.

Soup

As if you already didn’t have enough choices, I offer you one final option! You can use the sauté base to make celeriac soup. For a brothy, chunky soup, simply add more bone broth to the pot once the sauté is done. Scrape up the bottom, add some Za’atar, more black pepper, a dollop of honey and a dash of lemon juice (yes, same ingredients as the dressing). Warm the mixture and serve as is.

If you prefer a purée style soup, combine cold bone broth and dressing ingredients (Za’atar, more black pepper, a dollop of honey and a dash of lemon juice) with the finished celeriac sauté in a blender. Blend until smooth, then gently warm soup on medium-low heat, stirring and making sure not to bring to a boil. Experiment with adding cream, or top with crème fraîche.