Canning Chestnuts

Chestnut season is here in the northwest! I think my two trees finally have enough to do something with this year. I'm thinking of using a french recipe to make a Chestnut Cream and I was wondering if that is safe to water bath can. I think since chestnuts aren't an acidic food ( I haven't measured ) that the answer is no but I thought I'd ask the community.  I think I can freeze that cream so that's fine as well. For the rest of the chestnuts I was thinking of drying them and then later grinding them into flour.

Chris, that recipe sounds divine! And, it might be possible that there's plenty of sugar in it to make it safe to can... but, the density may be prohibitive. Being a nut, the oils are more likely to go rancid, before (?/rather than?) botulism would set in, BUT, these are simply somewhat-educated guesses, not gospel. I've no doubt you could, at almost any point in the recipe, freeze it. I'll do some digging, and see what information I can find.

Beyond the high level of sugar, I'm looking at this as a nut butter, for the purpose of determining safety. So far, I've found this information, from the Extension offices of South Dakota, that seems like a promising outcome, for you: https://extension.sdstate.edu/how-make-safe-nut-butter

Another possibility might be to freeze the nuts, after shelling, or even after grinding and make the cream as needed. Since the finished cream has a fairly long shelf life, especially when refrigerated, depending on how fast you go through it, you could make a monthly batch.


BONUS: A recipe for your chestnut cream, made with honey: https://foodinjars.com/recipe/honey-sweetened-chestnut-butter/