Oven or Toaster Oven Roasted Chestnuts

In my last post, I showed pictures and wrote about where to find and how to select fresh chestnuts in the grocery store. Today I’ll show you how to roast those chestnuts as easily as possible.

If you’re using a full-sized kitchen oven, make sure the oven rack is a third to halfway off the oven bottom, and preheat the oven to 450 degrees. If there’s an option with your toaster oven, set the rack in the middle of the toaster oven. Most toaster ovens don’t have that option; no problem. For toasters ovens, there’s no need to preheat as they come up to full heat quickly enough.

This next step is really important. Before roasting, make shallow cross cuts in both the round and flat sides of the chestnuts. The reason for doing this is that the chestnut meat inside the shell is moist, and that moisture will turn to steam quickly as the chestnuts roast. Making cuts that just penetrate the chestnut shell will allow steam to escape and prevent the chestnuts from exploding, which does indeed happen and is no holiday joy at all to clean. You bet I’m talking from experience. Make the cuts by holding the chestnut firmly between your thumb and forefinger. Then use the point of a paring knife (short bladed knife) to make two cuts into and just below the hard shell.  Make one cut about ½ - ¾ inch with the grain of the chestnut shell and then another cut the same size across the grain. Make those cross cuts on both sides of the chestnut.  

After making those cuts in all the chestnuts, put them in a baking pan if you’re using a big oven, and put the baking pan with the chestnuts on it in the oven as soon as it heats to 450 degrees.  If you’re using a toaster oven, put the chestnuts right on the toaster oven rack and turn on the toaster oven to bake at 450 degrees. No matter what type oven you use, set a cooking timer for 25 minutes. When the timer sounds, either take the baking pan out of the oven or open the toaster oven door and let the chestnuts cool until they’re safe enough to touch.

When the chestnuts have cooled enough to hold comfortably, break them open by first squeezing them between your thumb and forefinger – the shells should crack.  Then use your thumbs to peel away the outer shell. The cross cuts you made should help a lot with the peeling.  Now, it’s best if you can also peel away the fuzzy membrane that’s in between the hard shell and the nut core itself.  Sometimes that membrane comes off easily.  Sometime it doesn’t.  If it doesn’t, well, that’ll just be a little more fiber added to your diet.

If these written directions gave you all the help you need, great. But if you’re more visually oriented, like I sure am, you can get complete easy to follow step-by-step picture book directions by just clicking this  link.