Epic Chestnut Fail

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire? More like land mines exploding in our oven. Raise your hand if you knew that chestnuts explode when roasted without first scoring the casing. I am not talking the calming 'pop!' that popcorn makes. No, it sounded more like Saving Private Ryan was being re-enacted in our kitchen.

I put these puppies on a baking sheet and popped them in the oven at 450F to roast for a couple minutes. It had been a long day so I grabbed a delicious Harpoon Winter Warmer and joined Boy on the couch. Not two minutes later our heads both snapped in the direction of the kitchen when we heard a clear "BOOM". We looked at each other - both slightly puzzled - but only for a second before we heard the successive "WHAM"s and "BOOM"s coming from the kitchen. I opened the oven just a crack to find ("BOOM"!) exploded shrapnel all over only to be startled by ("BOOM!") another explosion. I turned the oven off immediately and closed it with a wooden spoon in the hinge to allow it to cool down quicker. Boy and I sat on the kitchen floor helplessly listening to chestnuts exploding over a contained fire and laughed uncontrollably for about ten minutes.

I opened the oven to find this scene and almost fell over laughing:

All those crumbs you see are pieces of chestnut. They were literally everywhere - including the two shells on the very bottom of the oven.

I will be trying this again soon - this time carefully scoring each shell before they go over the open fire. We will chock this round up to learning.