Sweet Chestnuts

Pink.

Hi villiagelife,

This earlier thread has lots of ideas that may help:

Sweet Chestnuts

I'll add your thread to it later to keep the suggestions together.

Pink

squeaky

OK...

My house guest came back from a forage with a Rolser full of sweet chestnuts - which has left me with two questions...

How the flying fynn do I get them out of their shells without feeling that my hands are trying to win the pin cushion championships of the world?

A fair number of them, despite all being windfalls, are not brown all over. So are the paler (less ripe?) ones still safe/good to eat?

squeaky

After calling a friend I have the answers...

The outer skins that are not open should be left on a sunny window sill to ripen. After time they will split open. Once split they are much easier to deal with and the nuts should pretty much fall out.

Nuts that are not fully brown can be left out to ripen.

A tip I was given was to leave one nut "uncut" and place it in the middle of the tray of nuts as you roast them. They should be covered with tin foil. When the uncut one explodes... they're done!

ragz_2

Just spent over an hour scoring, boiling then peeling a pile of sweet chestnuts. Now I have a bowl of chestnut bits... anyone have a good recipe for stuffing? I want to make it soon then freeze it for Christmas. After all that hassle I will NOT be doing it all again any time soon!

redlady_1

I wish I knew of a tree nearby. I flipping LOVE chestnuts but they are very expensive this year.

ragz_2

redlady_1 wrote: »

I wish I knew of a tree nearby. I flipping LOVE chestnuts but they are very expensive this year.

I know - the amount we collect would have cost about a fiver by Tesco's current prices.

I have two 200g bags of roughly chopped sweet chestnuts but all the recipes I can find are really complicated and require loads of fancy ingredients. Also I won't be 'stuffing' with the stuffing, I want one I can use on its own...

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3170/chestnut-bacon-and-cranberry-stuffing
this recipe looks nice but I don't want to have to buy a bottle of port, could i just leave that out?

redlady_1

Use a bottle of red wine instead. That should suffice.

I paid £3 for a very tiny net. They are my guilty pleasure

splodger_seedswapper

redlady_1 wrote: »

I wish I knew of a tree nearby. I flipping LOVE chestnuts but they are very expensive this year.

where abouts in wiltshire are you? if you fancy a drive to a site near romsey (only about 10 mins or so from salisbury down the a36) then give me a shout via pm - my dad owns a small chestnut copse and won't mind at all if somebody wanted to collect a few nuts up

*manda*

We have come home from a walk today with probably 5kg of chestnuts. We have tried roasting but they are proving very difficult to get out of the shells. We tried scoring, leaving in a tea towel after to steam etc but still struggling.

We were thinking about peeling first then roasting, would this still work?

Also, thinking about doing something with them after e.g. Mixing with a sugar syrup solution or something... Any tips?

I know we can make soup etc but frankly we are too lazy....( but honest!)

squashy

I'm not sure the "conker" type of chestnuts (horse chestnuts) are edible in the same wasy as the ones you buy...could be wrong though?