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Roasted Chestnut Soup

It’s still the season of chestnuts and as I picked a whole bag of these shiny brown beauties I had the ideal excuse to make some chestnut soup. I was not really convinced by the many recipes on the Internet so I decided to come up with my own recipe to spice up that soup. There is two ways to make this soup, the tough way, where you roast fresh chestnuts yourself or the easy way, buying some packages of cooked ones in the supermarket. I opted for the first option and decided to roast the chestnuts myself.

How to roast chestnuts in the oven ? Well for this soup I used about 600 grams of fresh chestnuts. Find the flat side of each chestnut and cut a large X with a sharp knife all the way through the skin. Place chestnuts on a shallow baking pan and place in the oven to roast for about 30 to 40 minutes in a preheated oven at around 200 °C. Shake pan several times to rotate chestnuts so they will cook evenly. When they are ready try to peel them as fast as possible. Once they are cooled down it’s quite hard to peel them. It’s quite a job, but the taste will be more full and slightly more sweet than when using the cooked ones.

Ok, so you are ready with the chestnuts, here is what you need more for this soup.

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  • 4 tbsp. butter
  • 1 medium onion
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 1 carrot
  • 1 rib celery
  • 1 apple
  • 1 small potato
  • 500 gr of roasted chestnuts or cooked ones
  • 1 tsp. 4 épices ( a mix of anis, fennel seeds, ginger and nutmeg)
  • 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1 ltr. vegetable stock
  • a dash of dry sherry

Ready, steady, Go !

  1. Wash and roughly chop the vegetables. Heat the butter over medium heat and add the onion, garlic, carrot, celery and apple and cook them for about 5 minutes. Don’t forget to stir from time to time. After 5 minutes add the cinnamon and 4 épices and cook a few more minutes.
  2. Add the chestnuts and pour the vegetable stock. Also add the chopped potato. Let everything simmer over medium heat for about 35 to 40 minutes.
  3. Purée the soup in a regular blender until you get a nice smooth soup. Add a dash of dry sherry, salt and pepper to taste and let it cook for a few minutes. The soup is now ready to serve.

Hope you enjoy it and feedback is always welcome.