A significant growth area in the food industry is fresh-prepared fruits and vegetables. Chestnuts are a prime candidate for peeling as a minimally-processed, refrigerated product. The present market volume of chestnuts is rather small and dominated by imported, in-shell chestnuts which often reach the consumer in poor condition and are tedious to peel by hand. An obvious solution is to offer fresh peeled and packaged chestnuts. A simple impact peeling process that we developed for chestnuts will be refined to produce this product. Objectives are 1) to improve chestnut preconditioning and the peeling device for maximum peeling with minimal kernel damage; and 2) to develop handling methods to obtain at least a two week shelf life.Applications:Accomplishing the proposed objectives is rather straightforward but necessary to allow development of a domestic chestnut processing industry. Fresh peeled chestnuts would offer consumers a domestically produced, easy-to-use, high quality product whose marketing would also benefit the increasing number of U.S. chestnut growers.
