AIR FRYER ROASTED CHESTNUTS

Hello dear readers, Rita here, bringing you a recipe that hardly needs an introduction. In fact, I’m not even sure it qualifies as a recipe. It’s more of a practical guide to getting perfectly roasted chestnuts at home in about 40 minutes.

Here in Portugal, roasted chestnuts are a small cultural treasure. Every autumn and early winter, street vendors set up their charcoal roasters on corners and busy squares, filling the air with that unmistakable smoky aroma. Buying a warm paper cone of chestnuts is a decades-old ritual. This is a simple, comforting snack that instantly signals the colder months are here.

Now, back to the air fryer. Yes, we’re sharing this a bit late in the season. But we’ve been making chestnuts in the air fryer every week (our son is obsessed!), and we’ve been showing the process in our Instagram stories. The response has been so enthusiastic that we finally decided to photograph, film, and publish it properly, even if this should have gone live two months ago. Better late than never. And as long as there are chestnuts in the stores, it’s worth putting them to good use.

This method — soaking the scored chestnuts briefly in boiling water before roasting them in the air fryer — has never failed us. It won’t replicate the flavour of charcoal-roasted chestnuts… nothing does. But in every other way, it delivers: warm and golden, crisp on the outside, tender on the inside, with just the right touch of salt. With so little effort and so little time, you get a nostalgic, well-loved snack that always hits the spot.

Go grab the last chestnuts of the season while you still can!