Don't Ruin Your Christmas Chestnuts By Forgetting This Important Step Before They Roast

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If roasted chestnuts aren't part of your family's Christmas traditions, they should be. They're warm and buttery soft, with sweet, earthy, and nutty undertones that can complement almost any holiday meal. Topped with herbed or compound butter (for reference, anything delicious + butter = compound butter), they're the perfect side dish for Christmas Dinner and make a cozy appetizer for Christmas Eve gatherings (though perhaps aren't the right pick if you're looking for the best holiday treats for people with food allergies). But while roasted chestnuts should absolutely be on your list of cheerful, comforting dishes for this holiday season, it's important to remember to score the raw nuts before roasting. 

In this context, scoring involves making a cut in the top of each chestnut before it goes over the open fire or into the oven. And it's not just an aesthetic suggestion. Chestnuts can explode if you don't cut a slice in their shell (which would really put a damper on your holiday gathering). Steam builds up as the meat inside the chestnut shells cooks, and if that steam has nowhere to go the pressure will eventually bust the shell open. Scoring the shell creates a place for the steam to escape and eliminates the stress of a potential pop fly coming out of the oven.

After going through all the work of choosing every detail of Christmas dinner, right down to selecting the correct butter for holiday baking, the last thing you'll want to do is deal with exploding chestnuts. Luckily, it's a problem easily avoided by scoring. But how exactly do you score a chestnut?

Well, although chestnuts have a hard shell, you can cut through them with a paring knife or a chestnut knife with a short, curved blade specialized for the job. Make sure each chestnut is placed flat side down on a cutting board before you make the cut, then slice an X on the top of each. A handheld chestnut scoring tool is another way to easily score chestnuts. They're as easy to use as a garlic press. They make the cuts for you as you squeeze the chestnuts, and they'll peel the nuts after they've roasted too. With tools like these making scoring so simple, you'll definitely want to be sure each chestnut has those small cuts before you roast them — whether in the oven or on an open fire.