Chestnut // fruit

🌱🍂🌰 It’s time to enjoy roasted chestnuts! Chestnuts are in season from autumn through to winter. Did you know how to avoid the chestnut from exploding in the oven? Just cut a deep slit into the shell before roasting. When the chestnuts are well-toasted, wrap them in a newspaper cone. After a few minutes, you can peel them without burning your fingers and enjoy them like Grandma Sita. Looking for healthy plant-based snacking? Count on roasted chestnuts!

💪 Chestnuts are rich in complex carbohydrates, fibre, vegetable proteins, and mineral salts. Remain a good source of antioxidants, even after cooking. Adding chestnuts to your plant-based meals not only provides a wide range of health benefits but also adds flavours and textures.

👩‍🍳Chestnuts are shiny brown nuts often used to make cakes, stuffings, purées, soups or stews as well as roast and eat them whole. Bitter when raw, roasted chestnuts have a delicate and slightly sweet flavour with a soft texture similar to sweet potato.

👵💚 Grandma Sita’s tips:
*Foraging chestnuts is as easy as picking them up off the ground. Edible chestnuts (genus Castanea) always have a tassel or point on the nut and are enclosed in sharp, spine-covered burs. Ripe nuts fall from their burrs then you can collect them from below the tree.
*Chestnuts are highly perishable and must be kept in a sealed glass container in the fridge. When kept at room temperature, they’ll start to go bad and become mouldy in the shell after a few days.
*Freezing chestnuts allows you to enjoy them nearly all year long avoiding waste. Chestnuts can be frozen with or without their shell, raw or cooked.

🚫 Be careful! The toxic, inedible horse chestnuts are rounded smooth and have a fleshy, bumpy husk with a wart-covered appearance. If eaten, they can cause digestive problems such as abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and throat irritation.

📗Magosto, Castanyada, Magosta, or Magusto are traditional festivals held in autumn around the Iberian Peninsula dedicated to roasted chestnuts, the tradition varies throughout its geography.

🌎 Anyway, you can buy roasted chestnuts almost everywhere, as they are a popular autumn and winter street food in East Asia, Europe, and New York City. The heat caramelizes the sugars inside the nut, leading to a scent that’s rich, warm, and comforting. The smell of roasted chestnuts is all around the world! 

♻️ Eating local and seasonal fruits and vegetables helps to reduce food waste, saves resources, improves food quality and healthy habits, and boosts the local economy.