When to harvest chestnuts and how to store them?
Chestnut is a nut unique to China, delicious in taste and crisp to eat. Besides being eaten fresh, it can also be stewed in dishes, soups, and so on, and it is rich in a certain nutritional value. Chestnuts are planted in all parts of China, so when are chestnuts generally harvested? What storage methods are there?
1. When are chestnuts generally harvested?
Judging from the maturity of the chestnut fruit: when about 1/3 of the chestnut burs on the whole tree have naturally split open, it is the best harvest period.
When harvesting chestnuts, avoid rainy days, the first clear days after rain, or periods when the morning dew has not yet dried, otherwise the harvested chestnuts are prone to rot. In practice, it is best to harvest them all at once after several consecutive sunny days, because chestnuts harvested this way have bright skin color, plump individual nuts, low water content, good quality, are not easy to rot, and keep well during storage and transport.
When more than 40% of the chestnut burs have split open, knock the burs down with a bamboo pole, pick them up and pile them in a shady place, spraying a small amount of clean water on each 20 cm layer to increase the humidity within the pile. The pile should be no more than 80 cm thick. After 5-7 days, when the burs have split open, pick out the chestnut fruits, taking care not to damage the smoothness of the shell. Some chestnut growers, for convenience and speed, beat the burs with a wooden stick after they split open, which severely damages the waxy luster of the shell, and some even become scratched, greatly lowering the grade of the product.
If chestnuts are harvested too early, the fruit substances are not fully accumulated, the water content is high, the fruit flavor is poor, and they do not store well, so harvesting should be carried out when more than half of the chestnut burs have split open.
After harvest, chestnuts must be protected from water loss and air-drying. When chestnuts lose too much water, the sugar content in the fruit rises, life activities are restricted, and losses from rotten fruit increase; moreover, the longer the air-drying time, the greater the loss. Therefore, after harvest they should be stored in time to prevent water loss and the loss caused by rotten fruit.
2. What storage methods are there for chestnuts?
1. Refrigerator storage. Take half a basin of cooled boiled water, add 1 small teaspoon of salt, then soak the chestnuts in it for 3-5 minutes for simple sterilization and disinfection. After soaking, rinse them once with unsalted cooled boiled water, spread them out in a container and air-dry for 1-2 days. When the chestnuts make a dry sound when shaken, put them in a plastic bag, tie the bag tightly and place it in the refrigerator's cold storage compartment. This method emphasizes using a plastic bag rather than a cloth bag, because the refrigerator will draw out all the moisture inside the chestnuts, making them shriveled, hard and tasteless. This method can store chestnuts for more than 1 month, and chestnuts treated this way have sweet and crisp flesh and are also uniquely flavorful when eaten raw.
2. Air-drying in a cloth bag. Spread fresh chestnuts out in a container, air-dry them in a cool, ventilated place for 2-3 days, then put them into a cloth bag; cloth bags have good air permeability, and plastic bags must never be used. Hang the bag in a cool, ventilated place and shake and bump it 1-2 times a day. This method can generally keep chestnuts for as long as 4 months.
3. Burying in sand
This method is more suitable for storing chestnuts in large quantities. The method is to air-dry the harvested chestnuts for 1-2 days, then bury them deep in sand, tread them tight and compact them so that no air can pass through. This method can preserve them for 2-3 months, and they taste just like fresh ones.