How do you roast chestnuts at home?

Roast chestnuts are one of the few foods that taste exactly like a season. In Italian cities, autumn arrives with smoke from the street vendors' drums and paper cones of caldarroste. At home you don't need a drum or a fire, just a knife, a hot oven or a heavy pan, and some patience with your fingertips.

Score every single one

This is the step that is not optional. A chestnut is a sealed parcel. As it heats, steam builds inside, and without a way out the shell can burst open with a loud bang and a spray of hot fragments. Clemson University's extension factsheet is blunt about it: do not roast a chestnut until the shell has been punctured, because the steam pressure can make the nuts explode.

How we do it:

• Lay the chestnut flat side down on a board so it can't roll.
• With a small, sharp knife, cut a cross or a single long slit across the rounded side, through the shell and the papery skin beneath, without hacking deep into the nut.
• Some people soak the scored chestnuts in warm water for a while before roasting. It adds a little steam and can make them easier to peel. Worth trying; not essential.

Cut away from your fingers. Chestnut shells are slippery and a small knife slides easily.

Oven or pan

Oven. The easiest for a batch. Spread the scored chestnuts on a tray, cut side up, in a hot oven. They are ready when the shells have peeled back along the cuts, the kernels look golden and a test one is tender all the way through rather than chalky in the middle. Shake the tray once or twice along the way.

Pan. Closer to the street-vendor version, and fun at the table. Use a heavy frying pan, ideally a perforated chestnut pan if you have one, over a medium flame. Keep them moving, shaking the pan often, until the shells are charred in patches and split open. A lid in between shakes holds in some steam and helps them cook evenly.

Either way, sizes vary, so taste one before you call the whole batch done.

The towel trick, then peel warm

As soon as they come off the heat, tip them into a clean tea towel, wrap them up and leave them for a few minutes. The trapped steam softens the inner skin. Then peel while they are warm, squeezing each one so the shell cracks further and pulling away both the shell and the thin brown skin. The Clemson factsheet gives the same advice: cool them partially, then peel while still warm.

Some will be stubborn. Put those back in the oven briefly, or set them aside for cooking where looks don't matter.

Choosing and keeping fresh chestnuts

Pick chestnuts that are heavy, glossy and tight in their shells, with no tiny holes and no rattle. Light ones have often dried out.

Fresh chestnuts are not a pantry nut; they are closer to a fresh vegetable. The Clemson factsheet suggests keeping them in the fridge, where they keep for a long time in a bag with a few small holes.

What to do with the ones you don't eat straight away

Roast and peeled, chestnuts are a gift to an autumn kitchen.

• Soup: simmer with onion, a bay leaf and stock, then blend. A little brown butter on top.
• Pasta: crumble them into a pan with butter, sage and Parmesan, or with mushrooms.
• Risotto: stir chopped chestnuts in near the end with a little thyme.
• Roast vegetables: toss them with Brussels sprouts, squash or parsnips in the last part of roasting.
• Something sweet: warm them with honey and a little orange zest and spoon over ricotta or yoghurt.

Cooked, shelled chestnuts freeze well too; the same Clemson factsheet notes that they can be frozen for a long stretch. Freeze them in small bags so you can take out a handful.