One of our favorite fall and Christmas time traditions is eating, roasting and boiling chestnuts! 🙂 It is something I look forward to around my birthday, near the end of November, when these little nuggets begin to make their appearance.
I can’t help but to get a big bag full of them and eat them constantly all day until I’m tired of cracking the shells or full. It is my favorite nut of all the nuts! And I got my husband hooked on them too! Our favorite thing to get just as we are leaving Uwajimaya in Seattle is a bag of roasted chestnuts since they are available all-year round (I’m not sure how, but I don’t question it…) and they are our road trip snacks for our drives up and down I-5 or back and forth across the state.
One of the things we tried last year was to roast them ourselves in the oven, and regardless of how long or how high a temperature we tried to roast them, they just wouldn’t cook through, or they popped and exploded. So this year, since I have been so tired and out of energy, we just opted to boil them. So long as you don’t boil them for too long, they remain nice nutty with a slight resistance to the bite and oh so wonderful!
Mei and Patella of course each wanted a bite and my husband and I peeled and cracked the chestnuts as fast as we could, so that they could each have a bite and we could get one in as well. But the batch that we picked up seemed to be rather spoiled. Almost 8 out of every 10 that we peeled was either rotten or not quite ripe (and those ones don’t cook through at all), so it was a long night of peeling chestnuts. About halfway through our batch, we gave up for the night and learned that Mei is not really a fan of chestnuts! She would put half a nut in her mouth, bite it, taste it, make a sour face and spit it out and go for another one so eventually we just let her hold two unpeeled ones and she would lick the casing and dance – so she apparently likes to hold chestnuts, just not eat them! Patella basically loves everything, so she spent quite a bit of time begging for bite after bite.
To make chestnuts yourself, buy as many as you like, then bring a pot of water to a boil – it needs to be large enough to cover the chestnuts once they are placed inside. Once it comes to a boil, put in the chestnuts and allow it to boil for 20-30 minutes. The water will take on a light brown hue, and once you think they have cooked for long enough, take one out, run it under cool water and slice it in half with a knife. Use a teaspoon to hull the nut and taste it. If it is soft and sweetly nutty then it is ready and you can take the pot off a boil. Dump out the hot water and run the nuts under cool water until they are cool enough to handle. Crack the nut and peel away the skin and enjoy!
Next year, we are going to buy a proper roaster and try roasting chestnuts that way. I can’t wait! Eeek!