What good are chestnuts?

Question

Do chestnuts have any positive health/ nutritional value?
How can you prepare and eat them (besides roasting them, obviously)?

Answer 1

Chestnut (Castanea), including the chinkapin, is a genus of eight or nine species of trees and shrubs in the beech family Fagaceae, native to warm temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The name also refers to the edible nuts produced by these trees. Most are large trees to 20-40 m tall, but some species (the chinkapins) are smaller, often shrubby. All are deciduous.

The leaves are simple, ovate or lanceolate, 10-30 cm long and 4-10 cm broad, with sharply pointed, widely-spaced teeth, with shallow rounded sinuses between. The flowers are catkins, produced in mid summer; they have a heavy, unpleasant odour (Bean 1970). The fruit is a spiny cupule 5-11 cm diameter, containing one to seven nuts. Chestnut trees thrive on acidic soils, such as soils derived from granite or schist, and do not grow well on alkaline soils such as limestone. When wanting to grow chestnut trees on such soils, the practice was to graft them onto oak rootstocks.

Neither the horse chestnut (family Sapindaceae) nor the water chestnut (family Cyperaceae) is closely related to the chestnut, though both are so named for producing similar nuts. The name Castanea comes from an old Latin name for the sweet chestnut
The American Chestnut, formerly one of the dominant trees of the eastern United States, has been almost wiped out by a fungal disease, chestnut blight, Cryphonectria parasitica. The American chinkapins are also very susceptible to chestnut blight. The European and west Asian Sweet Chestnut is susceptible, but less so than the American, and the east Asian species are resistant. These resistant species, particularly Japanese Chestnut and Chinese Chestnut but also Seguin's Chestnut and Henry's Chestnut, have been used in breeding programs in the US to create hybrids with the American Chestnut that are also disease resistant.

Castanea species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species; see list of Lepidoptera which feed on Castanea.

The nuts are an important food crop in southern Europe, southwestern and eastern Asia, and also in eastern North America before the chestnut blight. In southern Europe in the Middle Ages, whole forest-dwelling communities which had scarce access to wheat flour relied on chestnuts as their main source of carbohydrates.

The nuts can be eaten candied, boiled or roasted; the former are often sold under the French name marrons glacés. One easy method for roasting is to cut a slit in the top of each nut and heat in a shallow container, tossing occasionally, at 200-220 °C for 10-15 minutes.

Another important use of chestnuts is to be ground into flour, which can then be used to prepare bread, cakes and pasta.

Chestnut-based recipes and preparations are making a comeback in Italian cuisine, as part of the trend toward rediscovery of traditional dishes.

To preserve chestnuts to eat through the winter, they must be made perfectly dry after they come out of their green husk; then put into a box or a barrel mixed with, and covered over by, fine and dry sand, three parts of sand to one part of chestnuts. Any maggots in any of the chestnuts will emerge and work up through the sand to get to the air without damaging other chestnuts. Chestnuts to be grown in the spring need to be kept in moist sand and chilled over the winter.

Chestnuts should not be confused with Horse-chestnuts, which are used in the United Kingdom to play a game called conkers. Conkers, or Horse-chestnuts, are poisonous and are obtained from the tree of the same name.

Other products
The wood is similar to oak wood in being decorative and very durable. Due to disease, American Chestnut wood has almost disappeared from the market. It is difficult to obtain large size timber from the Sweet Chestnut, due to the high degree of splitting and warping when it dries. The wood of the Sweet Chestnut is most used in small items where durability is important, such as fencing and wooden outdoor cladding ('shingles') for buildings. In Italy, it is also used to make barrels used for aging balsamic vinegar.

The bark was also a useful source of natural tannins, used for tanning leather before the introduction of synthetic tannins.

CHESTNUT SOUP

1/2 lb. chestnuts
2 cups chicken or veal stock
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 cup sherry
salt, to taste

Boil chestnuts 10 minutes. Remove from water using slotted spoon. Peel while still warm. Shells and inside skins can be removed easily.
Cook the blanched chestnuts until tender in veal or chicken stock, then mash using a food mill or sieve.

Prepare a cream sauce by combining butter, flour, and milk. Add chestnuts and chicken or veal stock in which they were cooked; season with coriander, lemon juice, sherry and salt.

Answer 2

Chestnut soup, chestnut stuffing, chestnut puree....need I go on. They are versatile and can be used in lots of ways other than just roasting them at Christmas :D
The page below has a few more recipes in case you want to try them out :)
Nutritional value, not sure, but squirrels do well on them in my area so they must be good lol

Answer 3

Chestnuts are as good as any other nuts, I'm not sure they have any specific goodness about them.

They can be roasted (as you say), and boiled, you can use them in stuffing, they can be ground down to flour to use in cakes, all sorts.

Note though... I bought fresh chestnuts one year to roast and peel myself and I would advise against it, it was the most horrible job I've done for a long time. Buy vaccuum packed ones unless you have fingernails of steel.

Answer 4

The good chestnuts are the ones "roasting on an open fire" according to the sweet voice of Nat.

Answer 5

Sorrel & chestnut are sometimes very close in color. A sorrel is typically lighter/brighter red than chestnut, and is usually accompanied by the exact same shade of mane and tail, sometimes with lighter hairs mixed in. Sorrels can also have flaxen manes and tails. Chestnut horses are usually a darker or richer shade of red. Often with a mane and tail that are slightly darker red or matching the color of the coat. Liver chestnut horses are a rich, deep reddish-chocolate color. Their manes and tails vary. Usually their mane and tail will be lighter than their coat color, but with a slightly more reddish tint. I have also seen liver chestnuts that have flaxen manes and tails. :) Also keep in mind that each of these shades vary. :) Hope this helps! :)

Answer 6

Chestnuts are hard to classify. They're not quite like a nut and not exactly like a vegetable either, though they're high in water content, like vegetables. Highly nutritious, chestnuts have been eaten in the Mediterranean for centuries.
HOW TO USE: If you don't roast the chestnuts, you can eat them on their own (peeled) or as an ingredient in other dishes: in chestnut soup, with vegetables in casseroles, in baked goods, in stuffing for poultry or in winter squashes. You can also braise them in water or chicken stock to use them as a side dish. Dressed up with sugar syrup, they are sometimes candied or made into a sweet puree for ice creams and mousses.

Once a common tree in parts of the United States, chestnuts were attacked by a fungal blight in 1904 that spread rapidly. These days, most of the chestnuts you see in supermarkets are imported from Europe, particularly from Italy. But don't confuse them with horse chestnuts, which are inedible, and water chestnuts, which are used in Asian cooking.

HOW TO SELECT: They are widely available this time of year. Look for plump, firm, heavy chestnuts with dark, shiny shells. Avoid chestnuts that look spotted or moldy.

HOW TO STORE: Although chestnuts can be kept in a cool, dry place for perhaps a week, ideally they should be stored in the refrigerator in perforated plastic bags. It's a good idea to put a damp paper towel in the bag with them.

HOW TO ROAST: You can boil chestnuts if you like, but nothing beats the aroma and flavor that roasting gives them. To do that, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. With a paring knife, score the flat side of the nuts with an X pattern to let steam escape and make them easier to peel. Place the chestnuts on a baking sheet or roasting pan and put it in the oven.

Some chefs suggest scoring the nuts and soaking them in water for 30 minutes to an hour before roasting so that the residual water turns into steam, keeping the chestnuts moist. If you do that, be sure to dry the chestnuts before putting them in the oven. Others suggest sprinkling them with a little water before roasting, or oiling them lightly before putting them on a baking sheet that's been lined with parchment paper.

Shake the pan occasionally to make sure the chestnuts don't burn. When the skins split open at the X, which can take anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour, they're done. Eat them as soon as they're cool enough to peel.

HOW TO USE: If you don't roast the chestnuts, you can eat them on their own (peeled) or as an ingredient in other dishes: in chestnut soup, with vegetables in casseroles, in baked goods, in stuffing for poultry or in winter squashes. You can also braise them in water or chicken stock to use them as a side dish. Dressed up with sugar syrup, they are sometimes candied or made into a sweet puree for ice creams and mousses.