Khoresh Karafs | Celery stew

Celery Stew or Khoresh Karafs, as Iranian people say, is undeniably one of the most unforgettable tastes one can experience throughout life. But still they are ones who claim this lovely celery stew is a less powerful competitor against Persian beloved stew , Ghormeh Sabzi. Presumably, that’s why we see Khoresh Karafs less often at the Iranians’ dining table.

Khoresh Karafs Recipe

PersianGood Team

Celery Stew or Khoresh Karafs, as Iranian people say, is undeniably one of the most unforgettable tastes one can experience throughout life. This stew is very tasty and the way it is made is very close to other Persian stews like Khoresh Bamie, Khoresh Gheime and Khoresh Kadoo.

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Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 2 hours hrs

Total Time 2 hours hrs 15 minutes mins

Course Main Course

Cuisine persian

Servings 4 poeple

Ingredients

  

• 2 medium-sized onions
• 2 dried limes
• 200 grams celery leafs
• 400 grams celery stalks
• 400 grams meat cubes
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tbsp fresh mint
• 2 tbsp fresh parsley
• Oil as much as required
• Salt, pepper and turmeric as much as required

Instructions

 

• Start with washing and drying the celery, chop them in pieces of the same size. If you chop the celery stalks in the same size, the dish will look better. 
• To continue, dice the celery leaves and the mint and the parsley. Choose a suitable frying pan and heat it using the stove, and also add some oil. Put the mixture of diced vegetables in the frying pan. Stir-fry them. The longer you fry them, the darker they will get and the more beautiful the stew will become. Despite the fact that it makes the stew more pleasing, this action makes most of the properties of the vegetables go away.
• Right after stir frying the vegetables, take them out of the frying pan. Now, dice the onions, using some oil and enough turmeric, one again stir fry them in a pan.
  
• To continue, add the meat cubes the onions and stir fry them until they are all cooked. After that, add the tomato paste and stir fry that as well so that the taste of rawness will be gone.
  
• Then, add the celery stalks and stir fry them for a little while.
  
• Shortly, add a few glasses of boiling water.
  
• Lower the flame of the gas burner so that the meat will be cooked slowly. Use a fork to pierce the dried limes and let them absorb water in a glass of water for an hour.
• Once the meat is half-cooked, add the dried limes to the stew. When the stew is cooked, add the stir fried vegetables, salt and pepper to the stew. Leave the lid of the pot half-open for 45 minutes and let the stew be cooked completely and slowly.
  
• Like “Ghormeh Sabzi”, the more you leave this stew on the gas burner, the more prepared it will be. At the end of the process, taste the stew and if it was not sour enough simply add unripe grape juice to it. Eventually the stew is ready and it can be served with rice like kateh or cholo.

Why you should include celery in your meals?

It’s good to know that celery is a vegetable with a lot of properties, the most important items of which are

• Cleansing liver,
• Helping the health of nails and hair,
• Helping weight loss,
• Helping the health of heart,
• Controlling blood pressure,
• Improving memory skills,
• Controlling migraine,

And tens of other properties.

By preparing Celery Stew or khoresh Karafs you can take advantage of all these properties. Plus, Celery Stew is the most famous dish cooked with celery. Make sure that Celery Stew, cooked properly, can easily compete with “Ghormeh Sabzi”.

Using the ingredients mentioned here, you can cook Celery Stew for 4 people. If you want to prepare a more or less amount of this dish, simply use maths (multiplication and division) to find out how much of each ingredient you need.

Tips for cooking celery stew

To have a less dilute stew:

You can use pomegranate molasses to have a better concentration in your stew. It also makes it tastier and look more appetizing.

Celery stew with chicken:

In celery stew, chicken can be used instead of meat. For 4 people you need 600 to 800 grams of chicken. The steps of cooking are not much different but by using chicken, this stew will be cooked much faster.

Suitable celery for celery stew:

If the celery in the stew (once it’s been cooked) is too dry and hard, that’s because you have not used fresh celery. When you are buying the celery, do pay attention to its stalks. It’s better to use celery which is lighter in colour and has thinner stalks.

Celery stew with kidney beans and pinto beans:

Commonly, this stew is cooked without beans but if you want, you can use 150 grams of kidney beans or pinto beans to the ingredients.

First leave the beans in water, then, after stir frying the meat, use a colander to separate the water from the beans, add the beans to the meat, stir fry them for a minute or two and continue the other steps.