Boiled Chestnuts on the Camino

Here you can see how I quickly and easily made healthy, tasty chestnuts on the Camino. All you need is chestnuts, water, salt and a pot.

On the Camino you often pass large, beautiful chestnut trees. It is worth gathering the chestnuts and taking them along to the pilgrim hostel, where you can cook them if there is just a burner and a pot. They can be eaten the same day, but you can also cook them and eat them the next day as a little snack for the trip. Chestnuts are healthy and rich in dietary fibre and healthy fats.

Tips for the trail

Gathering chestnuts and eating them on the trip is an incredibly cheap meal. Sweet chestnuts are very popular in Spain and especially Portugal, where you can buy them at almost every street corner, and roasted sweet chestnuts are their answer to roasted almonds back home.

Be aware, though, of the difference between sweet chestnuts and horse chestnuts. Sweet chestnuts are the edible ones, and you recognise them by their heart shape and a small hairy tip at the top, along with more, denser and longer spikes on the shell. Horse chestnuts, which we have plenty of back home and use for making chestnut animals, are inedible. They are rounder and lack the little tip at the top.