Chestnuts are festive and absolutely delicious when roasted. They’re harvested from mid-September until December, so you can buy them in a shop or collect them from the ground around chestnut trees. Express.co.uk explains how to roast chestnuts, according to BBC Good Food.
Chestnuts are tasty and can be used in a whole host of recipes.
Chestnuts are an ingredient in a number of desserts and savoury dishes.
Nut roasts, stuffing, cakes, salads, pasta, soup, loafs, casseroles, and gravy are just a few things you can make with chestnuts.
Chestnuts are crunchy when raw but soften and become spongy when roasted.
Roasting chestnuts takes away the raw and bitter taste.
Chestnuts are considered both a fruit and a nut, and they taste a bit like sweet potato when cooked.
They are less nutty than they are sweet and buttery when cooked.
You can eat a chestnut raw, but cooking it removes the shell and helps in lowering its tannic acid.
Tannic acid can cause stomach irritation, nausea and vomiting when consumed in large amounts.
Chestnuts are very good for you, since they’re high in Vitamin C, carbohydrates and fibre, but low in calories.
How to roast chestnuts
Heat the oven to 200C/180 fan/gas 6.
Lay the chestnuts on their flat sides and make a long slit crosswise over the top with a sharp knife.
In other words, make an X shape or cross on the round side of each chestnut.
This keeps them from exploding in the oven and makes it easier to peel them after roasting.
Make sure you cut carefully through the outer shell but not the nut inside.
Do this to every chestnut, placing them into a large dish one by one.
Make sure the dish is large enough to be filled with one layer of chestnuts, without overlapping them.
Put the dish into the oven and roast the chestnuts for around half an hour.
Alternatively, roast them until the skins split open to reveal the orange nutmeat.
Take the dish out of the oven but leave the hot chestnuts in the tin for now.
Once cool enough to handle but still warm, it’s time to peel.
Snap off the shell and remove the inner brown papery membrane too.
To make this process easier, you could pile the chestnuts up in a clean towel first.
Then, wrap them up and squeeze them hard to make the shell crack.
Serve the chestnuts immediately, or chop them up to add to a recipe.