How to easily peel fresh chestnuts using 1kg of chestnuts, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and a bottle cap
By using baking soda and a bottle cap as a stabilizer, you can easily peel the outer and inner skins of fresh chestnuts.
Fresh chestnuts, loved as a nutritious snack during the Chuseok holiday, taste great but the process of peeling their hard shells is cumbersome. According to a Kim Dae-seok Chef TV video, using baking soda and a bottle cap allows you to separate the outer shell and the inner skin (yulpi) of the chestnuts much more easily.
How to soften chestnuts with baking soda and hot water
The first step to easily peeling chestnuts is to make them soft. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) evenly over 1kg of prepared chestnuts, then pour hot water over them. By applying thermal shock to the chestnuts through the hot water, they become soft, reaching a state where the shells peel easily. Leave them in this state for 30 minutes to soak the chestnuts.
After soaking, pour the chestnuts into a strainer and rinse them lightly with cold water to remove any baking soda residue from the chestnuts. At this stage, it is important not to soak the chestnuts in cold water for a long time, but to rinse them lightly as if giving them a "shower" under running cold water. This is because it ensures the inner skin, the yulpi, peels off well later.
Scoring and steaming using a bottle cap as a support
The second step is the process of scoring the chestnuts. Prepare a large cap and a small cap from a water bottle or a beverage bottle. If you place the chestnut on top of the large bottle cap, it balances, allowing for stable work. At this time, it is safer to use a paring knife rather than a large knife, and you must wear cotton gloves to avoid injuring your hands.
Once the chestnut is fixed on the bottle cap, press down slightly with a paring knife while rotating it sideways to make a score; this will cause the shell to split open naturally when the chestnuts are steamed later. For the scored chestnuts, pour an appropriate amount of water into a pot, place them on a steaming rack, and steam them. Once the steam begins to rise, steam for 20 minutes, then turn off the heat and let them sit for 5 minutes.
Immediately rinse the fully steamed chestnuts lightly with cold water to cool them down. If the shells have split wide open after letting them sit, it is a success. If you peel off the outer shell slowly first and then remove the inner skin, you can easily obtain the nutmeat without using much force.
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