Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Water Chestnuts



John made a trip to one of his favorite markets this weekend. He came home with these. They're water chestnuts. I had never seen fresh ones before. They taste SO good. You know the difference between a homegrown tomato and a store bought one? Same thing here!
Water chestnuts are easy to peel and slice. They're super sweet and crunchy. We had a lot more than we needed, so I experimented with three of them.
I took one and peeled and sliced it. The second one was just peeled. The third was left whole and untouched.
Then I put them in the freezer. The next morning I got them out to thaw. I couldn't wait to see the results of my experiment.
The sliced chestnuts were too mushy when they thawed. The whole, unpeeled one had a brown rim around meat when I peeled it. The whole, peeled chestnut was the winner. It looked and tasted like it was fresh, never frozen.
So this afternoon, I froze the remainder of them on parchment paper. When they're frozen, I'll pop them into freezer containers and we'll be good to go next time we fire up the wok.