FORAGING FOR CHESTNUTS

Chestnuts can be found in the UK in Autumn, if you can get to them before the squirrels that is. Don a pair of thick gloves and some walking boots and head on out for an amble through the forest on a crisp Autumn afternoon and you're bound to come across some. To find them, look down rather than up and you'll start seeing in increase in the spiky, furry husks littering the ground as you get closer to a tree.

Season: September to November

What to look for:

You want to be looking for 'sweet chestnuts' rather than 'horse chestnuts' which are poisonous. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to spot the difference. Here's what to look for....

Husks with thick, spiky burrs

Look for nuts encased in green or brown (green just means it's fallen off the tree earlier) husks thickly covered in spiky burrs. Horse chestnuts have a hard casing with a warty appearance so you're safe if they look like the above.

Take nuts that have already fallen to the ground rather than from the tree as they naturally fall once ripe.

Nuts that come to a point

Sweet chestnuts have 2-4 nuts inside that are joined into a point with a little furry/spiky bit on the end. Handy for pulling on to dislodge the nuts from the shell as well as in identifying that you're after the right nut.

How to use them:

Make sure you're wearing gloves when extracting the nuts from their husks, those spikes are SHARP.

Once you have your pile of chestnuts, you can roast them over a fire or in an oven and then eat straight away (very Christmassy!) or use in a game pie, ground and use the flour to make canistrelli or toss into a fruit crumble.

As always when foraging, never completely deplete one source (although that would be hard to do with chestnuts!) and always leave some for the animals.

Happy hunting!