Italian dried chestnuts

Italian dried chestnuts are ideal to get the best also out of season.
Dried chestnuts are a very traditional and natural method of preservation, which has been used in Italy for centuries.
Fresh chestnuts are first sterilized in warm water and then dehydrated with hot air and peeled. That’s it! No artificial preservatives are added.
The sterilization process deactivates the insect maggots and helps to manually take out the defected nuts which float on the water.
The hot air is generated by a fire made with dry chestnuts peels from the previous year’s crop. The drying process takes several weeks and it includes also mixing the various layers in order to achieve an even quality.
You can buy dried chestnuts mainly in health food stores: make sure you soak them for 12 hours and simmer them before use. Easy: now you can use them as an ingredient for your favourite recipes exactly like fresh chestnuts.
Dried chestnuts are sold as whole or broken. The quality is the same: use the more convenient broken ones as an ingredient and the whole for recipes where you need a more accurate presentation.