Chestnut Information

Chestnuts have been part of our diets for thousands of years. Our diets find chestnuts appealing because they are high in carbohydrates and vitamin C and no cholesterol. A serving size is 143 grams (about 7 large pealed chestnuts) provides:

Carbohydrates 76g (includes below sugars and fiber)
Sugars 15g
Dietary fiber 7g
Protein 5g
Fat 3g
Sodium 3mg

Chestnuts are almost always consumed after they are cooked. Some people do eat chestnut raw. Chestnuts can be cooked with the following methods:

Roasting in pan or oven (fresh only)
Boiling (fresh or dried)
Microwave (fresh only)
Deep frying (fresh only)

When fresh chestnuts are part of a recipe, dried chestnuts can be boiled until soft as a substitution for fresh chestnuts. To learn more about preparing chestnuts in foods click on this link.

Chestnuts can be stored for extended periods (up to a year) by drying them completely and storing in a sealed container. Storing fresh chestnuts can be challenging. Fresh chestnuts do not store well even in refrigeration. Fresh chestnuts can go bad just as many other fresh food items do with molds, fungus, bacteria, and yeasts. Washington Chestnut Company has an ongoing research project to help identify best ways to process chestnuts so they are less susceptible to going bad. For more information about storing chestnuts follow this link.

Chestnuts are grown on all continents except Antarctica. There are native chestnut species on North America, Europe, and Asia, Casual research for identifying the top tasting cultivars demonstrates that hybrid European chestnuts are preferred by consumers. Most cultivars of European chestnut types are susceptible to chestnut blight. Because chestnut blight is common in North America (East of the Rocky Mountains) European hybrid chestnut can not be grown. Instead most commercial chestnut growers grow Chinese hybrid chestnut trees that have resistance to chestnut blight. For more information about chestnut blight click on this link.

Do you want to grow your own chestnut tree? Growing a chestnut tree can be as simple as putting a chestnut in the ground and pray that it sprouts into a tree. Chestnuts do not keep the same characteristics as the mother tree it came from. Most of the time (90 some percent of the time) the chestnuts are not very good. Most commercial chestnuts are produced on grafted trees using known good parents of named cultivars. For more details of growing chestnut trees and some of the cultivars click on this link.