21 Chestnut Recipes That Demand a Spot on Your Holiday Table (2024)

FAQs

What foods contain chestnuts? ›

Chestnuts are also eaten as a stuffing or cooked with pheasant, duck, goose, and chicken. Chestnut-fed pork and beef are considered a delicacy because the chestnuts impart a sweet flavor to the meat. Pigs are fed on chestnuts to produce such specialties as the Serrano hams in Italy and 'jamón ibérico' in Spain.

Oven-roasting chestnuts is the best way to bring out the fullest flavour (if you want to eat them straight away or chop them into your stuffing mix). Boiling them will give a smooth texture for cooking in soups or purées.

Sweet chestnuts are edible, but horse chestnuts are poisonous. If eaten, they can cause digestive problems such as abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and throat irritation. More than one in 10 cases of poisonous plants being mistaken for edible plants involve horse and sweet chestnuts.

Just 10 roasted chestnuts include 17% of what you need for the day — a major plus considering most of us don't get nearly enough.

Chestnuts lose some of their vitamin C if you boil or roast them, but still have anywhere from 15 to 20 percent of your daily intake for this healthy vitamin. To retain more vitamin C in chestnuts when cooking, you can roast them at lower temperatures or use a food dehydrator to dry them.

They can be candied or puréed and sweetened for desserts. They are used to make fritelli (fritters), and they are also used as a substitute for potatoes in stews. Many Italian-Americans incorporate chestnuts into their Thanksgiving stuffing.

The soaking period allows the shells to fill up with water. The water in turn produces a steaming effect when the chestnuts roast, forcing the shells to burst away from the nut. Many recipes and tips I've encountered throughout my cooking life call for a brief soak, 30 minutes or so.

Chestnuts are commonly associated with the holiday season, but are a delicious treat to enjoy all year round. It's possible to eat them raw, though they are more common roasted. Regardless of how you prepare them, chestnuts are sure to be a welcome addition to your family's table.

How to snack on chestnuts? ›

Raw: Water chestnuts can be eaten raw as a snack or sliced up and added to salads to make them crunchy. Cooked: There are many ways to cook water chestnuts, including stir-frying, boiling, and baking.

NO. Despite the name water chestnuts are not a nut and come from the edible portion of a plant root. Chestnuts are in a different botanical category to peanuts and also to tree nuts and most people with chestnut allergy can tolerate peanuts and tree nuts.

In cases of severe allergy to chestnut, which are rare, the allergen responsible for the reaction is likely to be one of the lipid transfer proteins (LTPs). Symptoms may include wheezing, throat swelling and breathing difficulty and there could even be a fall in blood pressure leading to collapse.

Sweet chestnuts are usually known simply as chestnuts. Chestnuts don't contain the same proteins that cause allergic reactions in people with peanut or tree nut allergies. So, if you are allergic to chestnuts that does not necessarily mean you will be allergic to tree nuts or peanuts, and vice versa.

Chestnut food allergy has also been reported in those patients presenting with latex-fruit or oral allergy syndrome (2).