Roasting chestnuts at home lets you enjoy their sweet, toasty aroma wafting through your kitchen well before you eat them. Whether you pick them straight off the tree during their harvest season in autumn months, or find some at the farmers market, roasting them at home is easy. A bonfire is one way to do so, but it’s not the most practical, especially if you have a large batch you want to use for snacking, stuffing, or adding to desserts. Roasting chestnuts in the oven is one of the most common ways to do it, but doing it in the air fryer is arguably easier. Simply score the chestnuts along their rounded side, making either a long single incision or an X, and place them in an air fryer preheated to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20 minutes. Giving them a toss three or four times in between helps with even cooking and allows you to check that the nuts aren’t burning.
For the best roasted chestnuts, you need to start with a good batch of raw ones. Select large chestnuts with smooth, glossy skin. If they rattle or feel hollow, they’ve likely dried out, and a half-hour soak can mitigate this if they’re not too far gone. Boiling can help make chestnuts easier to peel, but as long as they are scored properly, the skin curls back as they roast, and peeling shouldn’t be too difficult. As with most foods, when cooking in an air fryer, do not overstuff the basket. Instead, make batches of approximately equally sized chestnuts so they all cook at the same rate.
Air frying may just be the easiest way to roast chestnuts
Raw chestnuts are bitter, so they must almost always be cooked. While boiling is one of the easiest ways to cook them and results in tender, lightly sweet insides, roasting brings out a deeper, nuttier flavor and a mix of soft and crunchy textures. Since air fryers essentially work like compact, powerful convection ovens, they’re great for making foods crispy. Their ease of use and fast pre-heating times make them more convenient to use than ovens. The heating is also more intense since air fryer baskets are smaller than the inside of an oven, so the roasting process occurs faster. This almost makes up for the one major con that air fryers suffer from — small batches. Since the nuts should be placed loosely in the small air fryer tray, you can’t roast too many at a time. This means you will have to do multiple batches if you need several. However, when you need just a few, say, to make the French Mont Blanc dessert topped with a chestnut, the air fryer is perfect.
Even if you need a large quantity of chestnuts roasted, the air fryer can be a good option. It gives you better control of the process than bonfire or stovetop roasting. Since it’s a good idea to cover and rest freshly roasted chestnuts so the residual steam loosens their covering, you can easily rest and peel the first batch while the second batch roasts in the air fryer.
