Chestnuts roasting on a, on a......

[torakris]

It's expensive?  The article said it's $12.98 at Zabar's...I'd think that anywhere else, it might be even a few dollars less!

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In Japan this

http://www.suwada.co.jp/kurikuribouzu.html#kyoudai

is used to peel chestnuts

scroll down a bit to see how it works.

[Hest88]

Oh, I just meant expensive in terms of a gadget I'd only pull out once a year, not in absolute terms!

[Hest88]

Okay, I caved and bought a Chestnutter. It arrived yesterday and I took it for a test drive.

The gadget is the size of a small ice cream scoop and all-metal--giving it quite a nice heft. On the good side, it definitely allowed me to score the chestnuts quicker than with the traditional method. However, there are three things about it that I wish were different.

1) The "bowl" you stick the chestnuts in is rather small. I suppose it would be okay if you were only using small Italian chestnuts, but I was scoring small to medium sized Korean chestnuts so the medium chestnuts were a tad too big to fit comfortably. Large ones would be impossible.

2) I expected it to work like a ricer. It does--sort of. Unfortunately, the heavy metal levers fit together closely without a gap, which means that if you squeeze the levers together with your entire hand you risk pinching your skin most painfully. (I did it rather gingerly, but still managed to pinch myself once.) However, if you just use your fingers to press down and avoid the pinch it's hard to get enough strength to press down easily.

3) The blades are rather exposed, which means you have to be very careful not to cut yourself on them. At times I would get a chestnut stuck and had to carefully pry it out of the bowl while avoiding the blades. Also, because the levers aren't spring loaded I can definitely see the lever accidentally dropping down and cutting you while you're trying to extract the chestnut.

So, the concept of the Chestnutter is good, but hopefully Version 2 will solve some of these problems, especially the safety issues.