Preparing and roasting Sweet Chestnuts

[Montivagus]

What do the street sellers put on them when they sell them?

At least a fiver!

 

[Jodie]

Jodie
Was that you i saw in greenwich park looking at the shrooms under the bush?
I had my 2 boys with me and i told you there was a load of big mushrooms in the middle of the bush. You told me you have books at home on them and take them back to id them?
the boys had just collected 2 carryer bags of conkers to play with at school and we were now hunting for sweet chestnuts.

Hi - just spotted this. It wasn't me, although I do intend to get hold of a book
on the theme of 'not dying with mushrooms' - there's a good one in the
Blackheath library by the Royal Standard / Stratheden parade. Actually that's
probably the one I'll get

You may well have seen me in Greenwich park of course! I'll be the one feeding
half maltesers or M+S feta and herb parcels to the squirrels by hand. They
seem to like that sort of thing and are very tame when they think there's a
chance of me sharing my lunch with them...

Jo

 

[Forest]

Just remove the brown woody casing, then scrape off the fury, fluffy layer until they're mostly white and eat them raw. Its that simple..

 

[sxmolloy]

OK so after reading all the above posts and consulting "food for free" here is what I have come up with.

Whilst out with the wife and kids today we collected these:

They are much more fuller than the ones I pictured in post number 1, and all were free from their prickly cases, lying there crying out to be collected

Here are a few for size comparison with a medium Victorinox:

At this point whack the old oven on, I did these on gas mark 5 for 15 mins, but pre-heated first.

Cut a cross in each sweet chestnut ensuring that when it rests the cross will face upwards.

Place your desired amount on a baking tray (I covered mine in tin foil first, to aid with the cleaning later). not forgetting the crosses need to be facing upwards

and shove them in your pre-heated oven.

After 15 minutes the outer shells should have opened up like this:

Remove the outer shell with your fingers and the thin layer of skin beneath to reveal the sweet chestnut below and munch away

On some of these I had cut the cross deep enough to easily remove the thin layer of skin beneath the outer shell, on others I hadn't cut quite deep enough and it was a little tricky, I suppose it is all trial and error. I intend to get a good few more pocket fulls for bonfire night and have a bash at roasting some on an open fire. for this one will have to be un-cut with a cross, when this explodes all over the shop, the rest should be ready.

Hope all this makes sense to any-one who like me, wondered how to prepare and roast these bad boys.

ATB....Stu

PS Thanks to all of you who left tips on this thread, really made things alot easier for me....Stu

 

[Brian]

Thanks for the pics Stu, I'll see if I can find some and give that a go.

Brian

 

[Jodie]

I feel I ought to get myself one of these little bushcraft knives so I can add
a bit of ceremony to the 'cross cutting phase' of the sweet chestnut roasting
experience

The photos are excellent, thank you - I thought about printing this out but it
runs to over 20 pages and the ends of text get lopped off.

I am going to harvest your thoughts into a Word document and get roasting.

Jo

 

[BOD]

If you place them in a cast iron wok or pan with small hot stones over a fire or stove and stir them often you do not need to make slits in them as the weight of the stones prevents anything flying around. They just split. The heat is also more evenly distributed and you should have less burnt nuts

That's how the Chinese do it.

 

[moocher]

hi, thought i would add my 2 pennies on this topic.since moving to the forest of dean from dorset 2 yrs ago,i have noticed that around my village it is mainly sweet chesnut trees,with plenty of young growth.i was told by a old forester that they used to cook the nuts by pricking them apart from one then placing them in fire on shovel and when the unpricked one exploded they were ready.also when i moved here there was still one person who using forester rights used to use pannage letting his pigs roam the woods eating the acorns /chestnuts and beech mast.then rounding them up at night precautions were taking to stop pigs eating household rubbish.there used to be a badtempered sow that would butt dogs in this village yrs ago.this year no pannage was taken,another old right declining like the putcher fishing on the severn near here.my youngest is classed as a forester as he was born in 1ooyds of st briavels on our bathroom floor,shame hes only 6 weeks old.