Guide to Foraging Wild Hazelnuts, Beechnuts and Sweet Chestnuts (and how to eat them!)

In this video I show how to forage for wild Hazelnuts, Beechnuts and Sweet Chestnuts, and how you can roast them to make them into super yummy snacks.
All three of these nuts (especially the Hazelnuts) can be found all over the UK, most of Europe, and much of North America.
In Wales (where I live), Hazel trees (or bushes) are literally everywhere in hedgerows, growing in fields, woodlands, wasteland and roadsides, and the nuts they produce at the end of a good summer are of practically infinite supply. They are tasty as they are or can be roasted for a crunchy texture and extra flavour. Most Hazel trees will bear nuts, but not all of them.
Beech trees are also common but in my area only around a quarter of them develop nuts. They are still easy enough to find, but sometimes the tree is too tall to be able to get to any without a step ladder. Yes they will start to fall when they are ready but the wildlife will be waiting and quick off the mark, so you might not find many left! They are small and fairly plain tasting, but roasting them does give them more flavour and gives them a crunch.
Sweet Chestnut trees are not common at all in my area, in fact I've only ever found a few locally. They are more abundant in other regions. In fact the only one I could find for this video had very small chestnuts, although I did find a much better one later (but didn't have my camera that time!). Sweet Chestnut trees can grow to a great age and size and are certainly a very grand tree. Sweet Chestnuts when roasted correctly are extremely tasty, and street vendors selling them hot can often be found at Christmas markets on cold wintry days - they certainly give a nice warm pick-me-up feeling!
Also, at • Guide to Foraging Wild... I show a few mushrooms that I found, but couldn't identify. I've since looked them up in a reference book and I think they are Tawny Grisette mushrooms, making them an edible species, but not particularly tasty so typically disregarded by fungi foragers.

[@ASmileAdayful]

I've just roasted some, ermmm they taste OK but the effort put in I doubt I'll bother again unless I was starving. I've also found out eating beech nuts raw is not good, mildly poisonous, so must roast first. 👍 Thanks for sharing.

[@poroldchap]

Hi Miles nice little video well presented found it entertaining thank you. many many years ago I ran a small fabricating engineering workshop called the Deadham iron crafts we undertook all manner of iron work one off etc, many of the local pubs had open fires so we produced a few chestnut roasters these resembled early Victorian bed warmers but smaller of course they could be round or square with a hinged lid drilled with holes, like you would recommend a cut cross in the nuts "all but one or two", placed in the pan put in fire till a loud plop was heard that telling us they were cooked with a pint of bitter they went down a storm at one time was a nice little earner !

[@TheAmazingAdventuresOfMiles]

Great to hear from you Poc and interesting to hear you used to make some Chestnut roasters! They do taste even better having been roasted on a nice wood fire, especially something like beech, the smoke makes it even more magic. That's a great idea about leaving a few un-sliced, so they explode deliberately, so you know they are cooked! I'll definitely do that next year, will have to wait until late November probably before they start falling to the ground. Look after yourself Poc!

[@lewiemcneely9143]

CHEERS and VERY Good! I like nuts but being old and geezerish, the nuts don't like me much. The horse chestnut looks a lot like what we here in the hills call a 'Buckeye' which is supposed to be poisonous and the old chestnuts succumbed to the blight that also made it over from Asia like where almost all of our blights made home. I think some trees try and grow but get just so big and die off. ALL hemlocks are dead and there are blights and borers to a lot of other things too. Such is life. Hope all is well there and thanks. The chestnuts got fixed over the holidays years ago in a butter sauce. YUMM! CHEERS again!

[@TheAmazingAdventuresOfMiles]

Ahh thanks for your words Lewie. Yes some of our trees here are struggling, especially Ash, which is a very common tree in the UK but they are all dying now from Ash Dieback. Only around 10% are expected to survive. The Sweet Chestnuts here were brought over from southern Europe by the romans and there are many fine examples about but they are almost all ornamentally planted. The one I got the nuts from in this video was about 800 years old apparently, but they can get to over a thousand years of age quite easily. We have a lot of old Yews here, there is one in a churchyard up the road that has been dated to 3,500 years old I believe, I might go see if I can find it some day. We do have some Hemlocks, they seems to be doing OK here as far as I know. Take care!

[@lewiemcneely9143]

@@TheAmazingAdventuresOfMiles Thanks for the video, Pal and I've heard somewhere of the Yew and it's great age and sorry that the trees there are getting the raw end of it but I suppose some would call it 'progress' but not me. Seems a lot of the trees there and here are dying from similar type diseases. Makes one wonder just how much unwanted 'help' we're getting. Take care and THANKS! Along with a CHEERS or 3!

[@wolfenstein6676]

Have you ever made cooking oil from beech nuts?

[@user-kp8bc6by8l]

nope, never tried. Have you?

[@wolfenstein6676]

@@user-kp8bc6by8l No, I haven't found anyone who has yet either :) .