I hear they’re good when roasted on an open fire… Is this true? Are they just as good raw? Are they hard to open? Where can they be purchased?
Are they expensive?
I have never roasted them on an open fire, but I like them.
I don’t know if you can eat them raw–I wouldn’t try it. They are probably middle of the road for nuts–not peanut-cheap but not cashew-expensive. You can roast them in the oven after cutting an “X” into the shells with a knife–you start peeling from that point.
I see you live somewhere in the Governator’s clutches. If you’re in the Bay Area, you can get chestnuts pre-roasted from a stall in the Ranch 99 mall in El Cerrito/Richmond. Otherwise, many grocery stores sell them. At fancy food places, you can get them peeled and candied in a can or jar as “marrons glaces.” You can also get fluffy white layer cakes filled with chestnut puree and covered in whipped cream in many Asian bakeries.
I have lots of fond memories of chestnuts as a street food. In Hong Kong, they roast them (in the shell) over charcoal in giant woks on the street in a mixture of sand and sugar and sell them all hot and blackened and caramelized. In Italy, I used to buy them off the street and eat them until my fingers were completely black from the soot on the shells.
They are tasty but sort of mealy in texture, and the flavor is fairly subtle. (Some people use chestnut flour in baking, if that tells you how mealy they are.) I think they are best eaten just-roasted and piping hot, and I would encourage experimentation with roasting over open fires. Just make sure you cut that hole in the shell so they don’t explode.
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They are good roasted on an open fire. I’ve heard that you can eat American chestnuts raw, but you’re unlikely to ever find them. European and Chinese chestnuts are awful raw.
You can cook them in the oven, or in the microwave though.
To cook them:
First poke them with a knife so that the steam can escape. If you don’t they’ll explode rather violently, and messily.
If you’re going to cook them in the oven, wrap them in foil and cook them at 350F for about 30 minutes, more or less depending on how big they are and how moist they are. By Christmas, you need to reduce that by a lot. If you overcook them they become to tough to eat.
If you’re going to microwave them, put no more than six in a paper bag an microwave at low power for 1 - 2 1/2 minutes until tender and sweet. They’ll burn your fingers when you peel them.
They run $3 to $6/lb around here. They’re easy to open; no more trouble than peanuts while they’re hot. As they cool the inner paper shell tends to stick to the meat.
Chestnut stuffing is to die for!
I don’t think I’d eat them raw. I’m not sure you’re supposed to. At best they’re kind of…waxy. Roast them. You don’t need an open fire (however romantic), just an oven. The second benefit is (due to a bit of moisture waiting to be steam) if you heat them they tend to split open, making them a whole lot easier to peel. I was never crazy about them by themselves, but they’re good in things. Chestnut stuffing for example.
Most supermarkets carry them, if not all year, certainly around the holidays. Er…more expensive than peanuts, not as expensive a macadamia nuts.
My location isn’t very specific. I’m in L.A. County. I’ll see if I can find them around here or maybe a place to order them from.
I cook them in an electric frypan/skillet, with the lid on in case of an explosion (and to make the cooking more efficient). The last time I did it, I used 300 F, with the chestnuts on the bare pan (oil would just be messy, and might burn), turning over occasionally for about 30 minutes. It’s probably more efficient than heating up a whole oven. You can take one out to test whether they are cooked or not.
Whatever you do, don’t make Jerry Holkins’ (of Penny Arcade fame) mistake. Make sure you’re not roasting Horse Chestnuts. Yeah, turns out they contain a poison called aesculin. :eek:
If you#'re picking them in the wild, firstly, make sure what you have is sweet chestnuts, not horse chestnuts.
Sweet chestnuts are shaped like a big fat teardrop, and are found inside very sharply spiny cases with downy insides. Horse chestnuts - which are not edible without going to a good deal of trouble - are superficially similar, but are more or less spherical in shape and come in a thick corky casing studded with bumpy spikes - very much like the stereotypical cartoon image of a floating sea mine.
OK, so if you have sweet chestnuts…
You can eat them raw, but you may not like them this way - after removing the brown leathery shell, the nutmeat is covered by a thin pinkish-tan layer of fibrous material which is quite astringent - sometimes this scrapes off easily, other times it might need soaking before it comes away. I’ve eaten them without scraping and although they are bitter to begin with, chewing them for a few seconds starts to release the sweetness. They are quite crisp when eaten this way - a bit like uncooked peanuts, only more so.
When you roast them, the bitter inner rind usually stays stuck to the leathery brown skin and the nutmeat turns soft and crumbly - it’s a lot like sweet-flavoured baked potato.
Chestnuts are different from all other nuts I know of - they’re starchy, sweet and somewhat mealy in texture. I don’t think they’re ever eaten raw - my guess is that raw chestnuts would be unpalatable and would be hard to get out of their shells. To me they taste better when freshly roasted and still warm than when they’ve been allowed to cool to room temperature.
Chestnuts are a great addition to bread stuffing.