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How to Peel Chestnuts (EASY)

This is a post about a quick little experiment I did to see what method of scoring- or chopping chestnuts resulted in the easiest peeling after roasting.


This is NOT useful if you are aiming for a whole peeled nut- this is useful if you want chestnut pieces to add to a recipe or dehydrate to make flour.


My original goal was to make chestnut flour- so I looked at a few sites and they recommended scoring the chestnut with an X on the flat site of the nut. I'm a little bit of a nerd about both kitchen knife safety and time efficiency, so this did not make sense to me. To score the nut on the flat site, you end up resting the curved side of the nut on the cutting board and it rolls around, or you end up holding it between your fingers. Either way, it didn't seem like the safest or quickest way to score a nut.


So, feeling discontent with this advise, I scored some nuts on the flat side and some on the curved side to see what would work best. Scoring on the curved side was easier, as I could place the nut flat side down on the cutting board.





Scoring chestnuts, flat or curved side, is still a little tedious, especially if you're doing a big chestnut project like making a lot of flour. So I also chopped some of the nuts in half, and some into quarters. This was quick and efficient and I still recommend placing the nut flat side down for chopping safety.



I roasted the scored and halved chestnuts at 400 F for 25 minutes and the quartered chestnuts for a little over 20 minutes.



As you can see, I scored way past the skin and right into the nut- whoops. That's why this is not a post about how to peel whole perfect nuts.

The quartered nuts were basically already out of their skins when I took them out of the oven. They also didn't take much extra time to quarter.


The nuts that I cut in half where a little harder to get out of the skins and some actually crumbled in the skin and didn't come out at all.


The scored nuts were a different story. They actually required peeling with both hands. Some of the nuts crumbled as I peeled them. This could have to to with baking time and the fact that I scored so far into the nutmeat, but either way, it took much longer to get the scored nuts out of the skins.



So in conclusion: if I go to make a big batch of chestnut flour anytime soon, I will be quartering the chestnuts and roasting them at 400 F for 20 minutes and letting them pop themselves right out of the skins so that I don't have to do it. It's quicker and easier for me to quarter a chestnut than to score it, it takes less time in the oven, and it takes essentially no time to peel. I wouldn't even call it peeling, its more like sorting the nutmeat from the skins.







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