Ah, the things you can do while procrastinating studying for an exam tomorrow at 9am. You can’t study if you don’t have a snack though!
Today, we will roast chestnuts on an open fire! Well, OK, no fire. We will roast them in the CLOSED oven. Well, there might be fire. But it won’t be romantic fire, it’ll be the bad kind.
Also, we’ll be roasting almonds as well. My first attempt doesn’t work out so well, because I cooked the almonds for the same amount of time as the chestnuts. Almonds need to be cooked about half as long!
Total Time: 50 minutes (of pure procrastination)
cooking: 40 minutes (20-30 for chestnuts, 10 for almonds)
active: 10 minutes
Ingredients:
raw chestnuts
raw almonds
salt, to taste
Grab a cutting board. We are going to have to cut the chestnuts so that they don’t explode.
Chestnuts have a habit of rolling around, allowing you to cut your fingers off. To avoid this, put a thick towel (or a doubled over thin towel) on top of the cutting board.
There is a hard outer shell to the chestnut. This is what we will have to cut. Chestnuts that are very soft or very hard are probably rotten. Use chestnuts that are firm.
Using a serrated knife, cut an X into each chestnut. You have to cut through the outer shell.
It should look like this:
I only did this many for the first time:
We bought a super heavy cast-iron skillet (12″), perfect for roasting nuts! Really, they can go into any pan or cookie sheet (that’s oven safe).
I will also attempt to roast almonds.
Ready for the oven!
Don’t put your skillet on top of your pizza stone. This is redundant. After snapping this photo, I removed the pizza stone.
Put the nuts into a preheated oven at 450º, for 20-30 minutes.
NOTE: The almonds didn’t do so well with the chestnuts. Chestnuts cook for longer than almonds. I don’t recommend doing them at the same time!
Here are my finished chestnuts, and burnt (so burnt) almonds.
The chestnuts will open by themselves from the heat. Hot chestnuts are easier to peel than cool chestnuts. As soon as they are cool enough to handle, peel them!
So burnt…
Now, let’s try some more almonds. I put these in at 450º for 10 minutes.
There are two layers that you have to remove from the chestnuts. This is the hard outer shell:
This is a chestnut with the outer shell removed. It’s hairy…
Now peel that hairy papery layer off!
Here are my finished chestnuts and almonds! Notice the difference in colour between the good almonds and the burnt (so burnt!) almonds.
Sprinkle salt onto the chestnuts, for a flavour boost.
It’s a nutty feast! Now, I can study…
To tell you the truth, the chestnuts weren’t all that tasty. I’m not sure what went wrong, maybe I didn’t cook them long enough (I smelled burning after 15 minutes, but it was the almonds).
After tasting them, I tried putting them back into the skillet and roasting them for 10 minutes at a time, until they tasted good. They are in the oven right now… Let me go check to see if they taste good yet…
Oops, they’re rock-hard.
But the almonds are good!
I’ll have to go get some more chestnuts, and try this again. Interesting experiment, but mission failed.
But the almonds are good!
December 17th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
maybe you just don’t like chestnuts?
December 17th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
I like how Zoe comments on here to tell Gavin that he doesn’t like chestnuts.
December 17th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
some things are just better said in an online comment. on your own blog.
the chestnuts tasted like… well, they were the consistency of an unripe banana.
the overcooked chestnuts tasted like rocks, with salt on them. i think i swallowed a piece of my tooth.