Yay, thanks so much for posting this! I bought some hazlenuts at the store on an impulse because they were so pretty and fall-ish, but I had NO idea what to do with them or how to do it! You have solved that problem!

misplacedtexan: hazelnuts (filberts) are different from chestnuts, you can just crack those with a regular nutcracker and eat raw.

are chestnuts the same as water chestnuts?

When I went to London in 2002, there was a guy from Spain in the hostel who was in the shared kitchen/lounge area, roasting chestnuts in a pan on the stove (and making a lot of smoke). He was giving them out to everyone from all the different countries staying in the hostel, and I think it was the first time I ever ate a chestnut. I liked them enough to buy a freshly roasted bag the next day from a street vendor in London. I don't recall them being scored with X's though. I just peeled off the skins somehow.

these look like buckeyes.

Thanks for this post. For the 1st time I'm living in a region that has chestnuts and I'm looking forward to trying them.

And for misplacedtexan - you can eat hazlenuts raw but they're much better if you roast them first, in the shell. They make the house smell amazing too.

@sirisha - no, those are 2 different things. Chestnuts are tree nuts and water chestnuts are the tuber of a water plant.

At Christmas, my mom likes to bundle up chestnuts in a foil package and toss it into the fireplace (presumably onto the coals).

We discussed chestnuts at a dinner party last night. Everyone agreed they're one of those things that is worth ordering at a restaurant or buying if someone else deals with them. I remember them being rather painful to peel and kind of disappointing.

Chestnuts are great. But be careful to make sure you're eating chestnuts and not horse chestnuts. A while back my girlfriend and I collected a big bushel of what we thought were chestnuts. Took them back home, painstakingly roasted and peeled them, put them into a chestnut and bacon risotto. About 6 bites into it both of us realized that what we were eating wasn't really food, and was actually sort of poison. Spent the rest of the night with upset stomachs, sipping 7up and eating light safe stuff like cucumber and tomato. After doing some reading, it sounds like we made ourselves a horse chestnut and bacon risotto. The first few bites were not terrible, but the more you ate, the more bitter it became. So bad.

Love chestnuts! I've just found them for the first time this fall and they are delicious. The roasting bit is totally easy, as I just throw them in the oven at 400 or 425 for 15-20 minutes. It's the cutting the little x in each one that is fiddly--you have to be careful because the little buggers are rounded, and to make sure you don't cut too deeply into them.

one information.
chestnuts don't have to be cooked. You can eat it in anyway you want.

@lnwn, there are not buckeyes. They look similar, but you can't eat buckeyes.

@Oneisco, wow! Yes, you can't eat horse chestnuts (also called buckeyes) - they cause stomach irritation.

@nyorange: chestnuts contain tannic acids that give them a very bitter taste. Cooking them kills off the tannic acids and removes the bitterness.

I have a box of peeled steamed chestnuts in the pantry. Any suggestions on what to do with it?

@fab those would be great in many chestnut recipes - with rice, stewed, in stuffings, pureed ...

Looking for a fresh chestnut icecream recipe. I've found many with canned chestnuts but none with fresh roasted...any ideas on a recipe or adapting the ones with canned chestnuts?

@fab: one of my cookbooks has a recipe for chestnut soup -- involving sherry and topped with foamed milk and grated nutmeg. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds really good. (The cookbook is "a beautiful bowl of soup" by Paulette Mitchell.)

@Corby we have it the same way in Portugal. You don't need to make the X cut, just one across the chestnut.

Here's how to do it:

Wash them well, dry them, make a cut across the chestnuts and add lots of salt. Put them in the oven and let them roast well. Than just eat it. Some people add a little bit of butter when they're hot!

When I was a kid, we'd always cook chestnuts on top our old coal fueled boiler. (It looked like an aga, but as it was coal fired, you could never really cook anything on it.)

Nowadays, I must admit I don't have the patience for fresh chestnuts. I don't seem to be able to find the quality any more. The last bag of fresh chestnuts I bought, I cooked them all and half of them were rotten inside.

I use vacuum packed or tinned chestnuts in cooking now, and I'm also a big fan of chestnut puree. Chestnut stuffing is an absolute must for our family at Christmas. I could eat it by the bowlful.

A Simple Chestnut Stuffing Recipe (Apologies for strange measurements, I don't weigh anything!)

Tin of Chestnut Puree
About 4 handfuls of whole chestnuts
2 large onions
Approximately half a loaf's worth of breadcrumbs
Salt and Pepper
About a cup of cream

Method:
Chop the onions and sauté in a little butter until they are softened.
Transfer the onions to a mixing bowl, add the chestnut puree, whole chestnuts, cream and seasoning.
Mix well, and add enough breadcrumbs to absorb the liquid and make a sort of dough (You should be able to gather it into a large sticky ball.)
Transfer into a greased baking dish (I put mine into a ceramic pie dish) and bake on a medium heat until it has firmed up and the top is slightly crispy.

I love chestnuts! I never cut an X though, I do one vertical cut; after they are done roasting I pinch from the top and bottom and the shell and skin easily comes off.