You can’t have Christmas without hearing “Chestnuts Roasting on An Open Fire” – many, many times. Chestnuts and Christmas just go together.

And then there’s something about always learning something new and applying what you’ve just learned. You might have seen my posts hear about roasting chestnuts in a conventional kitchen oven or toaster oven. Roasting chestnuts has been family tradition beyond my lifetime.

Then, very recently, I met with Celso Paganini, owner of Bella Vita, Italian foods importer. I got some of his chestnuts at a Greenwich, CT, supermarket 2 years ago. I was so taken by their consistently rich flavor and how well they peeled after roasting that I had to call to let him know they were the best chestnuts I’d ever had. We’ve been in touch since. When we met a couple weeks ago, I asked how he roasts chestnuts.

Celso’s favorite roasting method is over an open fire. Killer, and I have to try that sometime. But, when that isn’t possible, he roasts them in a pan with holes in it, like the one shown below, in a conventional oven, first at high heat, 550° F, to char the shells and then reduces the oven heat to 425° F for most of the roasting time.

Interestingly, when I went to the Bella Vita site to look up Celso’s chestnut roasting directions, I saw that he includes an extra step. After making crosscuts into the shells of both sides of the chestnuts to keep the chestnuts from exploding under high heat, which is a must no matter what roasting technique you use,…

…he also recommends soaking the freshly scored chestnuts in water before roasting.

I’d never heard of pre-soaking chestnuts before roasting them. Right away, I checked other top hit chestnut roasting directions, and though some of them suggested doing the same, one of them, Foolproof Living said they saw no difference between soaking and not soaking chestnuts, as explained below.

Still, I gave the soaking technique a try, and though the result turned out great, and I put together drafted picture book directions to make that technique easy to learn and use, I’m going to use the same chestnuts from one of the bags shown above and roast them exactly as I did the soaked chestnuts only without soaking and compare results.

Yep, that means more to follow. And that’s what learning and adapting – or maybe confirming – is all about.

In the meantime, I still stand by the easy, straightforward directions I’ve had here on the site and have posted about recently that you can get by clicking this link or the picture book directions image below.

More soon!