Recipe for baked chestnuts in the oven
My take on a recipe for the delicious delicacy: Roasted Chestnuts.
Chestnuts are a nut, so the shell is not edible. They need to be baked until tender, so the shell can be removed and they can be eaten.
The chestnuts we typically eat here in Denmark come either from France, Spain, Italy, or Turkey.
I love being at our local market, where especially the fishmonger and greengrocer provide me with knowledge about my ingredients, as well as tips for their preparation.
The greengrocer I bought my chestnuts from told me that they had just transitioned from the French chestnut season to the Spanish one, which these chestnuts are from. In addition to eating them with cold butter, flake salt, and a glass of red wine, he told me that the authentic way to prepare them is to make them in a charcoal grill or over an open fire to impart a smoky flavor. His further advice was to score them on the flat side and give them as high a heat as possible in the oven.
There isn’t a strong tradition of eating chestnuts here at home, perhaps because most chestnut trees are horse chestnuts, which are not edible!?
The difference between the two types of chestnuts can also be seen on the shell. There are few, large thick spines on horse chestnuts, while the whole edible chestnut is covered with small thin spines.
Equipment
- Oven
- Chef'S Knife
- Ovenproof dish
Ingredients
- 500 gram Chestnuts
- Coarse salt
- Butter for serving
- Flake Salt for serving
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 225°C (437°F) convection.
- Your worst enemy with chestnuts is moisture, which leads to rot.
- Therefore, it is important to keep them dry until they are ready to eat.
- Dry them well before preparing them as well.
- Put salt in the bottom of an ovenproof dish.
- Make a small crosscut with a sharp knife on the flat side of the chestnuts.
- Place your chestnuts in the dish with the cut side up. They will open up, so make sure this happens upwards.
- The salt keeps them stable, so they don't tip over and absorbs any moisture.
- Place them in the oven and cook for 10 minutes.
- Turn the heat down to 200°C (392°F) and let them cook for an additional 10-20 minutes, depending on their size, until they become tender and open up.
- Take them out of the oven and let them cool on a rack for a few minutes.
- Peel them directly at the table and eat them with cold butter and flaky salt (and red wine:-)).
- Bon appétit.
