Eat them raw. The meat is a little hard to get at but it is sweet and crunchy without roasting. Roasted they always taste, to me, like mealy potatoes.
This is for American chestnuts, which are rare but supposed to be the best. My aunt has a couple of trees (more like stumps) that will bear sometimes and we just stand there peeling and eating. Maybe un-American chestnuts are different?
I have never had them. Once in NYC at Christmas time we saw a vendor selling them, but we were low on cash, so we skipped it. Sometime I’ll give them a try.
Yep. Every time I see a chestnut vendor in the city, with the nutty-and-smokey roasting scent wafting in the winter air, I’m compelled to buy a bagful. And, with that first bagful, I am reminded why I never buy another bagful until the following winter. Like you observed, they’re kind of dry and mealy. I mean, the first couple do taste good, but after I get my roasted chestnut fill for the year with those two, I don’t need any more.
Slit the shell before you roast them so they won’t explode, and they’ll be much easier to shell thereafter.
Eat them with salted butter.
They can also be boiled and prepared in various ways. Before boiling, the shell must be slit almost all around.
I had a relative that lost an eye to an exploding chestnut.
They taste much better pureed and made into a soup with wild rice, etc.
Seriously? Wtf? I’ve never heard of this hazard.
There IS a fuzzy coating on the nut itself, after you take off the shell, that should be removed. It’s a royal pain in the butt, though. If there’s an easy way, I never learned it.
There are four kinds of chestnuts in commerce.
European chestnuts are the big ones you find in the grocery store. They’re kind of mealy and bland. They are great in the Thanksgiving turkey stuffing.
Chinese chestnuts are a little smaller, but the nuts are much better tasting. They’re unfortunately how chestnut blight got here.
Chinkapins and American chestnuts are smaller still; about nickle to quarter dollar size. They are sweeter still. These are the only ones that can be eaten raw. These are vulnerable to chestnut blight, and usually they are only found on sprouts growing off the roots of old, otherwise dead trees.
There are also Chinese/American hybrids that are crossed and recrossed until they are like 95% American. They are supposed to be resistant to chestnut blight. I had an earlier version of one of these and it produced awful nuts.
As I was skimming through the thread titles, I thought this said “I’m roasting cherubs!”
Nothing like the smell of angelic baby fat on the fire.
I love chestnuts. I score them and coat them with olive oil before roasting. Pliers are good for pulling of the shell. Watch out for sharp edges on the roasted shells. The canned ones, shelled and cooked, in brine or syrup are poor substitutes.