Storing Chopped Celery – Which Method is Best?

If you can squeeze in a hour or so one day a week to chop the veggies you’ll need for your week’s meals, you’ll save yourself time and effort.  I recently found a helpful website called Still Tasty with information on how long foods will keep safely in storage, and I put one of their recommendations to the test – celery.

The experiment went like this:

1. Three containers of chopped celery were place in the refrigerator.  All three containers were identical – small glass containers with airtight lids. One held just chopped celery, one held chopped celery covered with tap water,  and one held chopped celery with a sheet of Fresh Paper.
2. The containers were opened every few days to check for spoilage.  After 13 days, the results were compared.

Results:

The celery stored in water looked fresh and appealing, with the “just celery” and the Fresh Paper celery looked similarly dried out. There was no visible or sniff-able decay from any of the containers.

My unscientific 13-day test was within the window recommended by Still Tasty for chopped celery, and I’d agree with their recommendations that cut celery can keep for 1-2 weeks in the fridge.  Still, the dry ends were unappetizing, so I think I’ll store my weekly chopped celery in water.