what can I do with chestnuts?

My neighbor gifted me with a bunch of chestnuts. I've never had them before. So except for the old seasonal song that mentions them roasting by an open fire, I don't know what to do with them. I tried one raw but wasn't too keen on that. Does anyone have some ideas to share? Recipes?

They aren't good raw, but can be cooked multiple ways. Roasted in a frypan or in the oven, they need pricking or a little X cut in the shell with a knife. Roast till the shells start to burn, peel, add salt! Boiled and then peeled, they can be candied, used to make stuffing which would be good for Thanksgiving or Christmas feasts, or dried and then ground to make flour.

Peeling them and getting the brown skin under the shell off is the tricky part, but the longer they're cooked the easier they are to peel.

Unlike most nuts they are starchy rather than a protein source.

My mother-in-law has a wonderful recipe for a chestnut and pumpkin soup.  It's a blended soup, containing nothing but chestnuts, pumpkin/squash and vegetable stock. Cream can be added, but is optional. She mainly uses canned chestnuts, so if you start from fresh they'll have to be precooked in the oven (20 minutes at 220 degrees C apparently, cut a slit in the shell before so they don't explode) and then peeled.

Use about half a peeled mid-sized winter squash or pumpkin (my mother-in-law tends to use butternut squash) for about 500 grams of peeled chestnuts. Chop the squash, put in a pot with just enough water to cover the pieces, and boil until soft. Add the chestnuts, boil another 5-10 minutes. Blend the soup and season. The recipe comes from the Ardèche region in France, where chestnuts are traditionally a staple.

I use them primarily as chicken feed.

the trouble of trying to fit one of the ultimate perennial staples into a modern diet!

they get a gentle sweetness when roasted, that may seem a little weird if you’re used to plainer starches (grains/pasta/taters), but they can great in some of the same ways. chopped with gravy on ‘em? yes, please!

chestnut stuffing is a classic.

The boiled and peeled ones can be added to a salad greens plus bacon.  They can be made into flour, though I've never done this, and then made into cakes - look for Italian origin recipes.  Just be sure to put a slit in the skins as mentioned above to avoid unhappy cleaning jobs if they explode. Also I should mention that peeling takes patience, and the nuts often split into pieces - a drag if planning to candy them.

You can spread them out in the sun and dry them, and once they're fully dry, they can be ground into flour. The flour made from them has a lovely sweet flavour.

When I visited France, a family served me chestnuts at a small gathering of farmers. I think they boiled them, in the shell, then we sat at the table, peeled them, and ate them one by one. It slowed the meal remarkably. Gave time for beautiful conversation.

My experience with chestnuts is that when you sprout them in the fridge over the winter and then plant them in your nursery bed, they're the most bestest favorite squirrel food ever and one squirrel can easily eat 100 in one day. But that's probably not how you should eat them.

this is one of my comfort foods and also the only thing i really know to do with chestnuts. https://www.justonecookbook.com/chestnut-rice-kurigohan/
i can occasionally collect chestnuts here and the peeling just defeats me. When I have collected them I've made a sweet paste, which was amazing, but it's just too much work for us (and i say this as a person who does all sorts of crazy things in the kitchen)