Fruit
Chestnut
CastañaCastanyaCastanea sativa
Before potatoes, chestnuts were winter bread in many European mountains. Today they mostly mean smoke in the street and hot newspaper cones in your hands.
When
Around: Oct–Dec · At its best: Oct–Nov
Around: Oct–Dec · At its best: Oct–Nov
Around: Apr–Jun · At its best: Apr–May
Around here
Montseny is Catalonia's chestnut country, and Viladrau holds a chestnut festival every autumn. The Castanyada, on the night of 31 October to 1 November, is celebrated with roast chestnuts, sweet potatoes, panellets and muscat wine. In those weeks the castanyeres come back, with roast-chestnut stalls on street corners.
At the market
- Glossy, hard and heavy, with a tight, close-fitting skin.
- Avoid little holes (grubs), mould spots or ones that feel hollow.
- Home trick: drop them in water; any that float, bin them.
At home
- They're more perishable than they look: out of the fridge they dry out or go mouldy in days.
- In the fridge, in a paper or mesh bag, one or two weeks.
- Roasted and peeled, in the fridge, two or three days.
If you have too much
- Freeze them roasted or boiled and peeled: later they go straight into stews or purée.
- Chestnut spread: boiled, peeled and blitzed with sugar and vanilla, in sterilised jars.
- Dried chestnuts: air- or smoke-dried, they keep for months; soak and simmer to use.
In the kitchen
- Roasted: score the skin, then into the perforated pan over the fire or a hot oven; wrap them in a tea towel for a few minutes and they peel more easily.
- Boiled with salt and a few aniseeds, Galician-style.
- Chestnut purée with game or roast chicken.
- In the stuffing for the Christmas chicken or turkey, with prunes and pine nuts.
- With mushrooms and sweet potato in an autumn stew.
“Pulling someone's chestnuts out of the fire”: doing the risky job so someone else gets the benefit.
What it brings
Per 100 g, raw.
- Energy
- 196 kcal
- Water
- 52% water
- Carbs
- 44.2 g
- Protein
- 1.6 g
Stands out for
- High in vitamin C40.2 mg · 50% of what you need in a day
- Source of folate58 µg · 29% of what you need in a day
- Source of vitamin B60.4 mg · 25% of what you need in a day
- Source of potassium484 mg · 24% of what you need in a day
Data from the USDA (FoodData Central). See the full table ↗ · How we decide what stands out
Goes with
- Sweet potatoSept–JanIt looks like a potato with ambitions, but in the oven it turns almost into a pudding: slow heat converts some of its starch into sugar.
- Saffron milk capSept–DecCut it and it bleeds orange milk; handle it too much and it bruises green. Both are normal, and both help you recognise it.
- PumpkinSept–FebIt's harvested in autumn and, whole, keeps for months without a fridge: it was the vegetable that lasted till February. In Spanish, «giving someone pumpkins» means turning them down.
- PomegranateSept–DecA jewel box with hundreds of seeds. There's a trick to getting them out, and once you know it you won't stain your shirt again.