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hi,

i have 2 large chestnut trees, with lots of nuts on them.. how do i know when the chestnut is ready? how do i get them off the tree? what do i do with them then?

all ideas and recipes gratefully received

Do you mean sweet chestnuts? They will fall and the shells crack open.

i go for the ones on the ground.

They are a real pain to peel but they freeze well. I'm still using cooked peeled ones from 2 years ago!

Oh, and for cooking or roasting the main thing to know is to prick them or cut a slit in them first or they will explode!

i recently made pie with this year's chestnuts (non roasted) and french chestnut cream.
mixed it with a little sugar, two eggs, flour, a little water for the yeast and milk. I hacked the chestnuts for the mixture and left some just split in half to put on top.
tasty. not too sweet and a little dry and heavy, but went very well in rather small pieces with coffee or tea.

Do make sure they are sweet chestnuts and not horse chestnuts which are poisonous!

I believe you can boil them to make it easier to peel the shells off then powder the nuts for flour

What are the tell tale differences?

We used to play conkers, are they horse chesnuts?

The sweet chestnuts' shells have lots more spikes which are more thin also and can really hurt when you open them with bare hands.

The horse chesnuts' shells don't really harm and the chestnuts themselves are quite round, while the sweet ones are kinda pointed.

Horse chestnuts are conkers - tell tale difference is there tend to be children lobbing sticks up into conker trees

9ball wrote:Horse chestnuts are conkers - tell tale difference is there tend to be children lobbing sticks up into conker trees

Or being lifted by their childminder

Whats the best way of storing chestnuts, the sweet ones that is after you have cooked them ... I love them and find them really usefull to add to stews.

Annpan wrote:What are the tell tale differences?

We used to play conkers, are they horse chesnuts?

Just incase your still unsure. This is a horse chestnut



Whereas this is a sweet chestnut.

Silver Ether wrote:Whats the best way of storing chestnuts, the sweet ones that is after you have cooked them ... I love them and find them really usefull to add to stews.

In the freezer!

I absolutely LOVE chestnuts and admit to having paid a small fortune for some from the supermarket (5.95 euros per kilo!). I then roasted them, waited 20 odd mins for them to cook, sat down to a film with them, burnt all my fingertips impatiently getting into them and all for perhaps 3 that were any good! What a waste of time & money. But those few that were good, were so so good, I always go back for more lol.

Millymollymandy wrote:

Silver Ether wrote:Whats the best way of storing chestnuts, the sweet ones that is after you have cooked them ... I love them and find them really usefull to add to stews.

In the freezer!

bloody eck ... cant get much more in there

In the ficticious "Redwall" series by Brian Jaques there is constant mention of candied chestnuts. not sure if this actually possible but would be cool to try no?
Boil them in honney a while and then bottle maybe . . .