The season of chestnuts falls in autumn, and they are really delicious during this season as the chestnuts produced more glucose (sugar) when the temperature is lower, making them sweeter after cooking. It’s also cheaper as well since there’s more good supplies during the season!

There are a few ways for you to enjoy chestnuts and we have a few conventional ways, which are either roast them in an oven, grill them on a griller (which has the similar effect as roasting), or boil them in hot scalding water. Meanwhile, with the current advancement in technology, we have a new option: Air fry.

Today we will be teaching you how to prepare your raw chestnuts in 4 different ways!

Before anything

Whichever you do, the first step is always to use your knife and draw a slash (X) on the chestnut shells. This is because when you cook them, pressure will accumulate inside the shells and cause explosion (in this case we would like to call it chestnut going nuts).

We personally experienced chestnuts exploding in our oven so remember to make sure that the cut on the chestnut is all the way through and you can see a bit of the flesh (just to be sure).
After making sure that all the chestnuts have big cuts on the shell, do drop them into hot boiling water for 3-4 minutes.

Airfry

If you are too lazy to roast your chestnuts, simply air fry them.

Meanwhile, preheat your air fryer to 190C. Once it’s done, bring all the chestnuts out from the boiling water and place them in the air fryer. Remember to also add a cup of water to the air fryer. This is to ensure that the chestnuts come out nice and chewy after air frying.
Air fry them for around 10 minutes, and shake the chestnuts every 3-4 minutes to make sure that they are evenly cooked. If the water evaporated while air frying, just add an extra 1/2 a cup of water and you will be fine 😀

After that, just make sure it’s cooked and remove them from the air fryer, wait for them to cool down, and eat away!

Roast or Grill

Roasting is the most conventional way and common way when it comes to cooking chestnuts.

Preheat your oven to 400C and just leave your pre-boiled chestnuts in for 15-20 minutes.

You need a temperature that high so that the chestnuts will separate themselves from their woody skin.

And in case you ask, how do we know if a chestnut is cooked?
Try it, that’s probably the only way.

Boil

Boiling chestnut is quite straight forward, and it is a great way if you are planning to make chestnut jam out of them. Just bring a pot of water to boil and then boil until the chestnuts are soft.
Straight forward.

Give these recipes a try and we hope you enjoy them!