Am I Hallucinating Canned Vegetables?

December 29, 2005 3:02 PM

Tinned celery in the UK - have I been hallucinating canned vegetables?

I mentioned to my boyfriend that one of my weird food habits is that I'm partial to some canned vegetables right from the tin, such as hearts of palm or celery hearts. He then said 'what do you mean canned celery?' and said he'd never heard of such a thing. I dismissed him as a philistine and went to google and online supermarkets such as Tesco, Sainsbury's To You and Ocado to prove that of course canned celery existed. Except that the only evidence I can find on the whole of the interweb to show that I haven't imagined buying cans of celery (from my local Waitrose), was from the US FDA approving catering sized barrels of celery hearts.

Has anyone else in the UK ever bought (or even seen!) cans of braised celery hearts in the canned goods aisle at their local supermarket or food shop? When I'm back home in London I'm determined to go and check I'm not losing my mind, but if anyone could help convince my better half - and indeed myself - that these do actually exist, I would be most grateful!

posted by kitschbitch to food & drink (6 comments total)

Canned Celery

googling "Canned Celery" turned up lots of the nasty blighters
posted by blue_beetle at 3:35 PM on December 29, 2005

A site called "trollydolly" lists Tesco Celery Hearts, I can't access the Tesco site without registering first though so, here is the other link.

food.gov.uk also has statistics [pdf] on canned celery including the stores it is sold in, countries of origin and best before dates.

And Roland food has canned celery hearts listed on their site.
posted by squeak at 3:42 PM on December 29, 2005

Yep, I found that by googling as well, however those are being sold in the US and even then only as bulk-buy purchases (presumably for the catering industry or for someone in the US with a serious celery addiction!) What I bought was a single 400g sized can in the UK for about 60p, and so I was wondering if anyone in the UK was aware of these being sold in their supermarkets or other local food shop...
posted by kitschbitch at 3:46 PM on December 29, 2005

Squeak - how weird! Cos when I actually searched Tesco's website (and Waitrose's online counterpart Ocado) nothing showed up. However, your google-fu of the food.gov.uk stats showed that Waitrose definitely do sell what I thought I bought, and hence I'm not going totally mad! Hurrah!

I'm guessing that perhaps they just don't sell everything that they stock in store online, and hence why it doesn't show up when I search for it (perhaps they only sell the most popular goods online, and clearly there isn't a massive demand for canned celery?)
posted by kitschbitch at 3:51 PM on December 29, 2005

What on earth would that be like? Not like celery tastes like much as it is. How do you use it? It is as "crisp and ready-to-go" as they say?
posted by mimi at 8:08 PM on December 29, 2005

The celery isn't crunchy and raw, it's soft because it's been braised. My mum used to braise celery from raw when I was child and serve it as a side dish - as I recall she braised it in stock - as well as using it in casseroles and so on. The canned stuff can be used wherever you might want to serve warmed braised celery, but also cold in salads if that tickles your fancy...
posted by kitschbitch at 6:04 AM on December 30, 2005