Roasting Chestnuts at Home to Rival any Street Vendor… · Faith Middleton's Food Schmooze (2024)

FAQs

What do street vendors use to roast chestnuts? ›

They are delicious eaten hot straight from the oven, as soon as you can peel them without burning your fingers. Traditionally in Italy, street vendors roast chestnuts over a wood-burning roaster, which gives them a lovely smokey taste. A huge round pan with a perforated bottom is roasted over the hot coals.

By tradition, rural populations gather to celebrate the turn of the agricultural season and to collect chestnuts, often roasting some of them there and then as part of the festivities. In Galicia alone, there are over 60 registered chestnut festivals, all in the autumn, coinciding with the Magosto.

The smell of fresh hot-roasted chestnuts is their only advertisem*nt, but they do a brisk business at curbstones and in doorways in many parts of the Big Town. Most of them can be found in midtown Manhattan, the Wall Street area, Greenwich Village and at the entrances to parks and museums.

A versatile nut

In the Bel Paese, chestnuts are employed in various culinary forms, including roasted, boiled, dried, or ground into flour. The flour, in particular, is prized for its ability to transform into pasta, bread, or pastry, giving a delightful nutty flavour to a wide range of dishes.

You don't have to soak your chestnuts before roasting, but it does help a lot with peeling them and cutting them. Soak them in water for about an hour before you cut them and put in the oven, they will be easier to peel and moist inside.

Roasted chestnuts taste so good, and are even better when paired with a glass of wine. Even more, chestnuts can be used in salads, pasta and both savory and sweet side dishes. They also add a distinct nutty flavor to stuffing and go well with many fruits and vegetables like cabbage or apples.

The chestnut is part of autumn and winter traditions in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Greece. There are also chestnut trees in England, Turkey, Croatia, and Georgia. Slovakia and the Netherlands are more recent geographies, but the tradition around chestnut consumption is not as important.

They have a nutty, sweet flavor, and a slightly mealy, crumbly texture. For hearty meals, chestnuts work well as an addition to bread-based stuffing because their richness makes a good complement to the savory herbal notes typically used, Kamp says.

Large Chestnuts ($6 per lb)

Soups, stuffing, side dishes or the classic roasting; these take care of it all! Approximately 35-40 per lb. Get notified by email when this product is in stock.

However, because the blight fungus does not kill the root system of trees, American chestnuts persist today in natural areas as re-sprouts from blight-free root systems. One of those areas is Rock Creek Park.

Why are chestnuts expensive? ›

ORGANIC GROWING

Organic chestnuts can bring as much as 50% higher prices than non-organic, in part because all imported nuts into the U.S. must be fumigated during importation, so no imported nuts can be labeled organic. Specialty health food grocers are very interested in purchasing American-grown organic chestnuts.

Asia is the largest producer and consumer of chestnuts in the world. The use of chestnuts as food over 9,000 years ago in Japan is documented in carbonized nuts found in ancient villages. Recent programs have mandated the large-scale establishment of chestnut orchards in many different regions of China.

Chestnuts: used in various sweets such as the Mont Blanc dessert and in Japan, chestnut yokan (jellied dessert) and kurikinton, the mashed sweet potato and sweetened chestnut delight that is an indispensable part of traditional New Year's cuisine.

Roasted chestnut is a popular autumn and winter street food in East Asia, Europe, and New York City. Asian chestnuts (Castanea crenata, C. mollissima) as well as European chestnuts (C. sativa) can be used.

That said, even amongst all the Horse-chestnuts in our city streets, you can still find a few European, Japanese, & Chinese Chestnuts (Castanea sativa, C. crenata, C. mollissima) which are indeed edible.

Chestnut Species

The chestnuts that you may be used to eating from the farmers market or grocery store are typically Chinese or European species.

They can be eaten steamed, boiled, dried or, most commonly, roasted. Basically what we are trying to say is you can use them on/in/with everything and they will improve it!