Many housewives will be interested in learning how to store chestnuts correctly. Indeed, in addition to the fact that they are rich in vitamins and mineral salts, they can be used to prepare various dishes. Chestnuts are used to make puree, stuff game with them, and use them to prepare a side dish for baked meat and to prepare various culinary products. Currently, they are used to bake bread for dietary nutrition, pies, and cakes. Roasted chestnuts can be used instead of coffee. The oil is used in the culinary and confectionery industries.
Several ways to store chestnuts
Before storing fresh chestnuts, they need to be dried in a well-ventilated, sunny place. Then the dried fruits are poured into barrels or large boxes, layered with dry chestnut leaves. Fruits are best stored at a temperature of 2 to 5 degrees. You can store unpeeled chestnuts in a cool, dry place in a large container. In this form they can be stored until spring.
Chestnuts can also be stored in canned form. For example, make jam from chestnuts.
To do this, you will need one kilogram of intact and large chestnuts, washed and boiled in not too much water. Cooked hot fruits should be peeled from the inner and outer shells. Then pass through a potato press or through a meat grinder. Next, the resulting puree should be dipped into the prepared syrup (dissolve a kilogram of sugar in 250 ml of water) and cook, stirring continuously over low heat for about thirty minutes. The finished jam is removed from the heat, flavored with bergamot or lemon essence and poured into prepared jars. Chestnut jam should be stored in a cool place.
You can store chestnuts in the form of candied fruits.
To do this, large chestnuts of the same shape and size should be baked on a wire rack or stove. First, you need to make a cut on the shell with a sharp knife. Then the baked chestnuts are peeled and dipped, pricked one at a time with a toothpick into the prepared thick sugar syrup (per kilogram of chestnuts: 100 ml of water and 500 grams of sugar). Then place them on a greased baking sheet. To prepare the syrup, water and sugar are first heated over low heat and then boiled over high heat. The syrup should be brown and not very thick. The cooled candied fruits are placed in boxes and stored in a cool, dry place.
Chestnut (Castanea Sativa) belongs to the beech family. Its Latin name comes from the city of Castanea in Thessaly (Greece), a city famous for its beautiful trees.
What do we know about chestnuts?
Chestnut is a nut from the chestnut tree of wild or cultivated varieties. The chestnut tree can reach 35 meters in height. It has long leaves with serrated edges, blooms in May-June with long “catkins”, the flowers are very popular among bees (chestnut honey, mustard color, bitter taste, one of the best in terms of beneficial properties). Not every chestnut is edible: for example, horse chestnut and other wild varieties are not intended for human consumption.
The spines in which the nut is hidden are the chestnut fruits. The centers of growth of cultivated chestnut trees are the Mediterranean, East Asia, and the Atlantic coast of the United States. In a number of countries - France, for example, chestnuts are an integral part of cooking.
How to choose the right chestnuts?
They should be hard and glossy, uniform in size, large and heavy. When buying, you need to keep in mind that the best chestnuts are seasonal: they ripen in late October and early November. However, if desired, you can buy them both fresh frozen, peeled, and pickled, including in Russia. So you can cook all year round.
How to clean chestnuts?
Chestnuts are difficult to peel. Place them in a pan of boiling water for 2-4 minutes. Warm, they will clean much easier. Another way is to immediately place it under cold water after dipping it into boiling water for a short time.How to cook chestnuts? How to determine readiness?
Chestnuts can simply be boiled and then peeled. You can make a preliminary cut with a very sharp knife and cook for about half an hour in salted water with a sprig of dill for flavor.
To check readiness, insert a culinary needle into the chestnut. Chestnuts may burst - this is also proof that they can be removed from the heat. If you fry them in a frying pan, you should know that when they are ready, they “bounce” and “explode.”
Before putting the chestnuts in the oven, add a little butter to the baking sheet to soften them. To achieve the same result, pour a little vegetable oil into the water in which you will boil the chestnuts.
Chestnuts are used very widely in Mediterranean cooking: for the preparation of bakery and confectionery products (flour and fruits), jams, mousses, soufflés, purees, pancakes, soups, salads, creams, fillings for meat pies, for stuffing poultry or as side dishes for offal. There are very famous dishes, real masterpieces: and “drunk” chestnuts.
How to store chestnuts?
Fresh chestnuts will keep in the refrigerator for several days. After this time they become covered with mold. Chestnuts can be stored in sand, like carrots and beets, for several months. You can freeze them boiled or baked, then they will also be stored for a long time.
What are the properties of chestnut?
Chestnut is very nutritious and energetic. Eating it will help you avoid snacking throughout the day. Chestnut is easily digested when cooked. Raw chestnuts or cooked chestnuts, but in large quantities, can lead to active gas formation.
Chestnut is rich in potassium, magnesium, sulfur and iron, it contains vitamins B1, B2 and C.
The energy value of chestnut is:
196 calories per 100 grams, or 1.63 g protein, 1.25 g fat and 44.17 g carbohydrates
In addition, chestnut has other advantages: it is a honey plant, its leaves are used in folk medicine, and the wood is used to make high-quality wine barrels, and in general is highly valued as a building material.
Considering the huge demand for chestnuts abroad. The lack of competition in this sector of crop production in Ukraine, planting chestnut orchards over large areas can be a good source of income.
If you are not at all familiar with the technology of growing edible chestnut, and also do not know whether you will be able to sell its fruits and seedlings, start by planting one tree on your site.
Characteristics
Chestnut blooms annually and profusely, after the leaves bloom, from mid-May, for 15-16 days. The flowers are collected in long spike-shaped inflorescences. In inflorescences located at the ends of branches, pistillate (female) flowers are located on the lower part of the floral shaft, and staminate (male) flowers are located above.
Male flowers are whitish with a yellow tint, smell pleasant and are collected in three or more balls; after flowering they fall off along with the spikelet..
Greenish female flowers form balls, usually of three flowers, surrounded by a four-parted plus (involucre) with spines.
The fruits are nuts and ripen from mid-September to mid-November. When ripe, they fall to the ground. They have a characteristic chestnut color with a clearly visible light spot at the base.
The apex of the fruit is elongated into a spout formed from the shriveled perianth and pistil columns. Usually the fruit contains one seed, sometimes two or three.
How to propagate real chestnut?
Chestnuts are propagated by seedlings from shoots and by sowing fruits. I harvest fruits in the fall from the best trees, select the largest ones and immediately, without delay, mix them with damp (not wet) sand or steamed sawdust and lower them into a cold (temperature no higher than 9 ° C) basement for storage until spring, that is, until the moment of sowing.
If there are few seeds, they can be placed in a regular refrigerator.
Our advice:
To prevent the chestnuts from drying out, which is why their germination rate is significantly reduced, in winter I constantly monitor the moisture content of the sawdust.
If necessary, I moisten them with several handfuls of snow; if there is no snow, I spray them with melt water.
In the spring, at the beginning of May, I take the seeds out of the basement and inspect them. During this time, almost all chestnuts germinate and produce roots 10-20, and sometimes 30 mm long.
I sow them in prepared holes to a depth of 7-9 cm.
Necessary care
I mulch the surface with humus. Care consists of timely weeding and loosening. I don’t feed the seedlings with anything.
In the northern regions, sowing of seedlings of southern crops should be carried out later, planning for the emergence of seedlings in mid-June.
Chestnut seedlings are quite shade-tolerant. At first they need protection from frost.
At a young age, transplantation is well tolerated.
Our advice:
They grow better on acidic brown forest loams, develop well on fertile, moist soils, and do not withstand droughts.
They can grow on rocky, infertile soils, but are very inhibited on heavy, waterlogged soils. They do not withstand high lime content in the soil.
The chestnut tree blooms in the seventh year after planting.
What kind of crop can be harvested?
An adult tree produces 50-60 kg of nuts, and from 1 hectare of chestnut forest you can collect from 1 to 3 tons of fruits.
Abundant fruiting is repeated every 2-5 years.
How to store chestnut fruits?
Chestnuts are 50% water and should be stored in the refrigerator to prevent them from drying out:
- fresh chestnuts in shell are stored at room temperature for a week;
- keep fresh in the refrigerator for a month;
- frozen - up to six months.
Beneficial features
Real chestnut, or edible chestnut (another name is sowing chestnut), is an extremely valuable honey-bearing and nut-bearing crop of the beech family.
Its fruits contain a lot of easily digestible carbohydrates (up to 70% in dry fruits), 5-7% proteins and 2-3% fats (this is more than in wheat), about 1% malic and citric acid, raw fruits even contain B vitamins and S.
Excellent honey plant
Chestnut is a honey plant. In a chestnut forest, bees collect almost as much honey as in a linden forest.
Chestnut honey is dark in color, liquid, slightly bitter (the bitterness is removed by heating), but has high healing properties.
It is used mainly in the confectionery industry and for winter feeding of bees.
How to use the fruits of real chestnut in cooking?
- On the island of Corsica they replace bread.
- In pre-Columbian times, when potatoes had not yet been introduced to Europe, entire families of poor people were saved from hunger thanks to the fruits of the chestnut.
- At the same time, chestnut is a frequent ingredient in haute cuisine and gourmet menus. Chestnuts are eaten raw, baked, boiled and fried.
- Dried flour is used to make flour, which is almost as nutritious as wheat.
- A small admixture of chestnut flour to wheat flour improves the taste of bread.
- In Italy and France, chestnut flour is valued twice as much as flour made from peas, beans, beans and lentils.
- Confectioners use chestnuts to make pastries, cakes and sweets.
- Roasted chestnuts are used as a coffee substitute.
Larisa MARUSHCHAK
© Ogorodnik magazine
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Photo: pixabay.com
Many housewives will be interested in learning how to store chestnuts correctly. Indeed, in addition to the fact that they are rich in vitamins and mineral salts, they can be used to prepare various dishes. Chestnuts are used to make puree, stuff game with them, and use them to prepare a side dish for baked meat and to prepare various culinary products. Currently, they are used to bake bread for dietary nutrition, pies, and cakes. Roasted chestnuts can be used instead of coffee. The oil is used in the culinary and confectionery industries.
Before storing fresh chestnuts, they need to be dried in a well-ventilated, sunny place. Then the dried fruits are poured into barrels or large boxes, layered with dry chestnut leaves. Fruits are best stored at a temperature of 2 to 5 degrees. You can store unpeeled chestnuts in a cool, dry place in a large container. In this form they can be stored until spring.
Chestnuts can also be stored in canned form. For example, make jam from chestnuts.
To do this, you will need one kilogram of intact and large chestnuts, washed and boiled in not too much water. Cooked hot fruits should be peeled from the inner and outer shells. Then pass through a potato press or through a meat grinder. Next, the resulting puree should be dipped into the prepared syrup (dissolve a kilogram of sugar in 250 ml of water) and cook, stirring continuously over low heat for about thirty minutes. The finished jam is removed from the heat, flavored with bergamot or lemon essence and poured into prepared jars. Chestnut jam should be stored in a cool place.
You can store chestnuts in the form of candied fruits.
To do this, large chestnuts of the same shape and size should be baked on a wire rack or stove. First, you need to make a cut on the shell with a sharp knife. Then the baked chestnuts are peeled and dipped, pricked one at a time with a toothpick into the prepared thick sugar syrup (per kilogram of chestnuts: 100 ml of water and 500 grams of sugar). Then place them on a greased baking sheet. To prepare the syrup, water and sugar are first heated over low heat and then boiled over high heat. The syrup should be brown and not very thick. The cooled candied fruits are placed in boxes and stored in a cool, dry place.
How to roast chestnuts at home. How to cook edible chestnuts in the oven, slow cooker and frying pan
To prepare a delicious side dish, dessert, first course or salad, you can use the fruits of the seed chestnut or noble chestnut - they have a brown shiny skin and wrinkled kernels. Those who want to try this delicacy should find out how European chefs prepare chestnuts.
Many housewives and cooks use this unique product not only as an independent dish, but also make soups, pilaf, etc. from it. The only thing that is important to take into account is that chestnuts can only be eaten hot, as soon as you take them out of the oven or from frying pan, because the taste of the exotic nut will fade as it cools.
To enjoy the taste of a nut, first prepare it correctly: select fruits suitable for eating, pour water over those that float, collect and throw away, and continue working with the rest. Make cross-shaped cuts from the sharp edge using scissors or a fork and send them to fry. This action determines how easy it will be to peel the chestnuts later, and this is also where any roasted chestnut recipe begins.
In cooking, roasted chestnuts are a famous dish with amazing taste. Before you roast nuts yourself, you need to know what they are. So, you can eat chestnuts that are covered with a spiky green shell. Elongated fruits are considered edible; in appearance and shape they resemble an onion with a small tail at the sharp end - as in the photo.
It is worth noting that it is strictly forbidden to use lumpy round nuts (horse nuts) for cooking, because at best this threatens you with food poisoning. Such fruits grow on trees among large, spreading leaves in central Russia, so residents of warm regions are better off not taking risks and, if desired, prepare chestnuts, select and buy them in the nearest store.
If you want to try an exotic dish, then you need to figure out whether you should eat it. Consider the benefits and harms of roasted chestnuts:
- Among the positive qualities, it is worth paying special attention to the composition of the fruit: vitamins (choline, beta-carotene, vitamins A, B, C, E, K, PP, including ascorbic acid) and minerals (phosphorus, potassium, calcium, zinc, iron).
- An important role in creating a positive characteristic of a product is played by its nutritional value and composition: water, ash, saturated fatty acids, mono- and disaccharides, dietary fiber.
- Contraindications to eating chestnuts include the fact that when fried they contain carbohydrates and a large amount of starch, and this is unacceptable for people who are prone to obesity.
One of the most popular edible varieties are sweet chestnuts. The calorie content of roasted chestnuts is about 180 calories per 100 grams of weight, so eating them in small quantities will not negatively affect your parameters. When roasted, the exotic nut contains a lot of carbohydrates and vegetable protein, which will especially appeal to those people who do not eat meat.
Such an unusual ingredient can be used for different dishes: first, second, desserts, but the beginning of each recipe is heat treatment. How are chestnuts roasted? There are several ways. You can fry chestnuts in a regular or special frying pan with holes, bake in the oven, or boil. Read on for tips to help you understand how to roast chestnuts at home.
The presented method is a classic method for preparing edible fruits. Before frying chestnuts in a frying pan, you need to soak them and then use them, taking only those that have fallen to the bottom of the bowl. Step-by-step instruction:
- Prick or cut each fruit with a fork.
- Place the nuts in a frying pan filled with hot oil and cover with a paper towel. Wet the napkins several times during frying - this will prevent the fruit from drying out.
- Cover the dish with a lid and fry for 30 minutes, turning the heat to medium. It is recommended to shake the nuts periodically without opening the lid.
- Serve the dish, adding salt or sprinkling with sugar - as you wish.
Those who think that fried fruits are too dry can boil them with milk - the combination is simply excellent! To do this you need:
- Peel the already roasted nuts from the film, pour in milk until the liquid covers them 2 cm above.
- Add a couple of spoons of honey and a cinnamon stick.
- Let the dish simmer until the main ingredient becomes soft. Before sending the delicacy to the fire, you can add more cedar cake - this will make the taste of the dessert even more interesting.
You can also bake an exotic nut using the oven - the process is even simpler than frying in a frying pan. A well-known way to cook chestnuts in the oven is as follows:
- Preheat the oven.
- Make cuts on each fruit.
- Place the dough in one layer on a baking sheet and leave to bake for 35 minutes.
- Open the oven and serve the treat. From part of the exotic nut, you can also prepare, for example, a salad: add vegetables and durum pasta to the peeled fruits, and then it is recommended to mix this whole mass with a sauce of olive oil and lemon juice.
This method is quick and safe, if you cut or pierce the food with a fork before placing it - this will allow steam to escape and avoid “explosion”. Cooking chestnuts in the microwave is easy:
- Place the fruits in a shallow but wide microwave-safe dish.
- Lightly salt the product and pour in 3 tablespoons of hot water. Roasting this way is not practical, but the nuts can be steamed for easy cleaning.
- Cover the dish with a lid (not a glass plate) or film, leave the dish for 8 minutes, turning the power of the equipment to maximum.
- Try one thing, then either continue the process, or serve the delicacy to the table by pouring your favorite sauce on the plate.
How to cook chestnuts at home - recommendations from chefs
A healthy product containing many vitamins and protein, many people like it. However, not everyone knows how to cook chestnuts, and so that you can enjoy this snack at home and not in a restaurant, follow these recommendations:
- Before cooking chestnuts in a frying pan, they must all be cut - this way they will not “jump out” when heated.
- You need to place the raw ingredients in the pan in one layer, and the dishes should not remain on the stove for a long time, otherwise the nuts will turn out to be too hard and tough.
- You need to remove the peel as soon as the product is cooked, otherwise it will be much more difficult to do later.
- If you plan to store edible chestnuts, then know that fresh fruits can be kept in a cool place for just a few days, otherwise they will become dry and lose their shine. Baked, boiled or roasted nuts will last longer if you put them in the freezer.
Beneficial properties of edible chestnut, storage and harm
Useful properties of chestnut
The chestnut trees that we constantly see on the streets of southern cities are attractive not only for their unprecedented beauty and grace, but also for their many useful properties. Nowadays, not only the fruits of this wonderful tree are used for medicinal purposes, but also the flowers and bark. But it is worth noting that you need to assemble these components yourself only in environmentally friendly places, that is, away from the road and industrial enterprises.
Since ancient times, chestnut fruits have been widely used in folk medicine. And this is not surprising, because chestnut is rich in vitamins and other beneficial properties that can treat many modern diseases.
The main beneficial properties of chestnuts are:
- increasing the resistance of blood vessels
- blood clot resorption
- decreased blood clotting
- sharp drop in blood pressure
In addition, horse chestnut has excellent properties that can treat rheumatism, varicose veins, gout and thrombophlebitis. All of the above diseases are treated with a tincture made from chestnuts. It’s quite simple to prepare it at home: take fresh crushed chestnut fruits, add 1:3 vodka and leave for two weeks (preferably in a dark place).
In cases of salt deposition in the body, as well as hypertension, chestnut tincture is also recommended. It quickly and effectively cleanses the body of harmful substances, and also saturates it with useful substances and minerals that are necessary for normal human well-being.
As mentioned earlier, chestnut peel also has a proper effect on the condition of the body: it is considered an effective remedy in the treatment of prostatitis, varicose veins and cardiovascular diseases.
Many doctors claim that chestnut is the fruit of health and youth. This statement is based on the fact that in addition to the therapeutic effect, the beneficial substances of chestnut also have a beneficial effect on the skin, improve hair color, and the condition of the whole body.
That is why many modern specialists use the fruits of this tree in their treatment, because they will always help with almost any disease.
Chestnut is famous for the presence of fats, tannins and protein. They are the “weapons” of many modern diseases. In addition, chestnut fruits contain a huge amount of starch, unlike, say, modern nuts or seeds. But, unfortunately, many types of this wonderful fruit cannot be eaten due to the high content of tannins.
The fats and proteins present in chestnuts can treat heart and muscle diseases, and tannins relax the body, for example, helping to get rid of heaviness in the legs.
The harm of chestnut is revealed by daily consumption, as well as in the presence of certain diseases:
Many people get poisoned after eating chestnuts, this is due to the fact that you most likely confused the edible fruits with the horse ones. Or they consumed chestnuts that grew in non-ecological conditions. In any case, you must be extremely careful, because chestnut fruits can cause not only poisoning, but also an allergic reaction to its constituent components.
Nowadays, chestnuts (edible and inedible) should be stored fresh. After all, this is the only way you can preserve all the beneficial properties of the fruit. In order for the chestnut to be preserved for a very long time (more than a year), it must be thoroughly dried in the sun or in a well-ventilated area. It is important to note that the fruits must be dried in a thin layer so that they do not rot or spoil.
Thoroughly dried chestnuts must be placed in boxes or large barrels, periodically covering the layers with dry leaves (preferably chestnut, but any other can be used). Fruits are best preserved at temperatures from +2 to 5 degrees.
You can also successfully store unpeeled chestnut fruits. To do this, you need to put them in a dry container and leave them in a cool place. Unpeeled chestnuts are stored only until spring.
Edible fruits can be safely stored in canned form. This way they will not only retain all their beneficial properties, but will also last for a long time. Candied chestnuts are another way to store the fruit. But it is important to note that they are not stored for long, as they quickly begin to get soggy.
Nowadays, people more often use horse chestnut for medicinal purposes. However, edible fruits also carry a huge number of beneficial properties. Sweet fruits contain a number of microelements that are necessary for the treatment of many diseases:
- mastitis
- haemorrhoids
- swelling
- thrombosis
- dysfunction of the respiratory organs
- chronic bowel diseases
In addition, chestnut is a powerful vitamin fruit that contains a number of vitamins and microelements necessary to maintain the normal functioning of the body: K, A, potassium, copper, manganese and so on.
- Vitamin K has a powerful antihemorrhagic property, which is almost never found anywhere nowadays. In addition, it perfectly protects the body from the development of external bleeding.
- Vitamin A has a beneficial effect on the optic nerve and also has wound healing properties.
- Manganese is able to normalize the condition of the body's bone tissue. In addition, it regulates blood glucose and is actively involved in metabolic processes.
- Copper actively controls the production of sex hormones and also monitors the condition of connective tissues.
- Potassium relieves the body of stress and fatigue. In addition, it actively removes salts and excess fluid from the body.
As you may have noticed, chestnut is an excellent medicinal fruit that can treat many diseases of the body. It is important to note that its price is low, but its therapeutic effect is quite broad.
Sweet clover grows everywhere: along roads, in ravines, on the outskirts of forests and fields.
Agrimony is a perennial plant that has long been familiar to folk medicine for its medicinal properties.
More information
Cut each chestnut, place in a frying pan, cover with napkins moistened with water, and fry, stirring halfway through frying.
Fry boiled chestnuts for 5-10 minutes until the shells open.
How to roast chestnuts
1. Measure the chestnuts - they should fit in 1 layer in the pan. 2. Wash the chestnuts.
3. Make a longitudinal cut on each chestnut so that the chestnut does not burst during frying and so that the flesh is better fried. If the chestnuts have a very thick skin and cannot be cut with a knife, you can soak the chestnuts in cold water for 15-20 minutes.
4. Place the frying pan on a wide burner and heat it up. 5. Place chestnuts in a frying pan, flat side down, in 1 layer without adding oil.
6. Moisten 5-6 paper napkins with water and cover the chestnuts with them.
7. Wait for smoke and slight blackening to appear.
8. Turn the chestnuts over, remove the napkins, and fry for another 3-5 minutes.
9. Check the chestnuts for readiness by piercing them with a knife: the consistency should be like boiled potatoes.
10. Place the chestnuts on a plate, cool slightly and peel, prying the skin with your fingers or a knife where the cuts are made.
Important: Chestnuts must be cut, otherwise during frying they will loudly “explode” with pulp and stain everything around.
If chestnuts are being prepared for a savory snack, when frying, they can be greased with crushed garlic at the cut points.
How to roast chestnuts over a fire
1. Build a fire and wait for a strong fire.
2. Wash the chestnuts, cut each of them crosswise.
3. Place the chestnuts in the pot.
4. Place the pot on the coals, shaking the pot every 3 minutes.
How to roast chestnuts on coals
1. Wash and cut the chestnuts.
2. Build a fire and wait for the coals.
3. Make a small hole in the coals, put chestnuts and cover with coals on top.
4. Wait 10 minutes or until the chestnut “explodes” for the first time.
5. Transfer the chestnuts to a plate and cover until the internal temperature allows them to reach full readiness.
All about chestnuts
How to store chestnuts
For chestnuts, it is recommended to use an old frying pan, as chestnuts may leave stains that cannot be cleaned when frying.
Roasted chestnuts taste like potatoes, only sweet and with a nutty flavor. Roasted chestnuts with honey are a great appetizer to pair with wine.
How to choose chestnuts
Edible chestnuts have a brown shell, a sharp tip, flat on one side and round on the other. The kernels of a good chestnut are shiny.
Store raw chestnuts in a cool, dark place for up to six months. Roasted chestnuts are not stored - after cooling they lose their flavor.
Roasted chestnuts are often sold in Europe - they have a very soft texture because a fire diffuser is used - actually over the fire, in a frying pan with holes.
How to serve chestnuts
Serve chestnuts peeled, sprinkled with salt or sugar, with honey or cheese.
When to buy chestnuts
Buy chestnuts for roasting in September-October, when the season begins and ripe chestnuts are sold at the lowest price.
The catchphrase - “pulling chestnuts out of the fire with someone else’s hands” - came from a French fable written by La Fontaine. According to the plot of the fable, the monkey persuaded the cat to steal chestnuts from people roasting them in coals. Thus the monkey waited in complete safety for the chestnuts, while the cat risked and suffered from the fire. Thus, the expression means "to benefit from the efforts of others."