Monday, November 3, 2014

Celery Root Puree – Come for the Flavor, Stay for the Low Carbs

As promised, here’s the celery root purée seen underneath our recently posted crispy pork belly video. To be honest, I’m not a huge root vegetable guy, but celeriac, as it’s called in certain parts, is something I really enjoy. Plus, I’m a sucker for ugly produce.

I joked in the video that celery root tastes like celery, if celery actually tasted good, and for the most part this is true. The flavor is quite mild and pleasant, and the texture is somewhat similar to mashed potatoes. Considering this stuff is only about 5% starch, somewhat similar it’s pretty good.

This simple puree is a very versatile side dish, but the tasty root will also work sliced thin and layered in a gratin, either with or without the aforementioned potatoes. I hope you give this great fall and winter vegetable a try soon. Enjoy!


Ingredients for 6 portions:
1 large celery root, about 1 pound
1 lemon
salt to taste
2 tbsp butter
1/3 cup cream or milk, or as needed to adjust texture
cayenne to taste

9 comments:

meigancam01 said...

Thanks for sharing useful info on virtually identical, here i got lots of knowledge about it.
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Unknown said...

Looks interesting. If I ever run across Celeriac I will give it a try. We low-carb so I am always looking for potato alternatives, because I really miss potatoes.

abeppu said...

You may want to double-check that "5% starch" claim. From USDA data, I see that 100g of raw celeriac has 42 kcal, and 9.2g of carbohydrate -- i.e. roughly 87% of the calories in celery root is carbs. The corresponding figure for russet potatoes is 91%, so these are actually pretty similar from a macronutrient perspective.

Chef John said...

The 5% figure came from Wikipedia, which is never wrong. But, even using your numbers it comes out to 9% starch. I'm not sure math is your thing. ;)

Angela said...

Only recently tried celriac and really enjoyed it. My background is southern Italian so we didn't make many root vegetable dishes. Didn't know what I was missing. Thank you, Chef John!

Unknown said...

I'm not too good at math but a russett potato has about 72 carbs per 100 grams vs. celeriac which has about 12 per 100 grams. No it is probably not as delicious as a nice potato, but I don't think anything can replace the lovely though humble potato. However, I am willing to give this a try. Thanks again C.J.!

Haaase said...

Dear Chef John,
i've tried something similar a few years ago. But i've put some mashed potaties inside, too. The idea was good, but not good enough.

Thank you for enqouaging me to trye this again. In a better way. The way you do it the dish tastes exactly how i imagened it when i tried it back then.

Had it with some beef and salad.

Unknown said...

The 5% starch statement seems to be referring to the total weight/caloric makeup. When considering a 100g sample, if 5g of weight come from 5g of carbohydrate calories then yes Chef John is (mostly) correct. Only thing is he should replace "starch" for carbohydrate as starches are a form of carbohydrate and he seems to be referring to general carbohydrate. Abeppu's math is definitely off---if 87% of calories in a 100g sample are carbs, then you should see 8.7g of carbohydrates. I don't know how he deviated by .5g/carbs. HOWEVER, if his math were accurate then he would also be correct in saying "87% of calories come from carbohydrates."