Water Chestnuts

Why is it that water chestnuts don't get mushy when you cook them? I don't know of any other fruit/veggie/root/etc that does

 

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They have "hard" water in them!

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groan. twit LOL

 

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What do they taste like ?

 

Raw, they are crunchy. Roasted they are crumbly and hard.

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I like them roasted, it gives them a nutty flavour

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Buy why don't they get mushy when you cook them? All other roots do. Is there a special compound in them or are they just not being cooked long enough?

 

The water chestnut is actually a tuber or corm; basically the stem of the plant. They're rather tough to start with. The reason they don't get "soft" is because when you cook your other vegetables for X amount of time, you're not cooking the chestnuts the required Y amount of time to make them soft. If you cooked everything Y amount of time, your chestnuts would be soft and your other vegetables would be mush.

 

They are unusual among vegetables for remaining crisp even after being cooked or canned. They do this because their cell walls are cross-linked and strengthened by certain phenolic compounds, a property shared by other vegetables that remain crisp in this manner, including the tiger nut and lotus root

I have no idea what this means. :shrug:

 

Basically what it means is that the influence of phenolic cross-links affect the thermal stability of cell adhesion and maintenance of crispness such foods. Phenolic cross-links decrease enzymatic degradation of plant cell walls and influence microbial degradation of dietary fibre polysaccharides.

Or, in layman's terms, the cross-links cause the chestnut to resist becoming soggy because of superior cells. (But as I mentioned before, if you cook them long enough, they will become soggy eventually.)

 

How long is long enough?
Hmmm, I sense an experiment in the making. Let's see, who was it that did the spinning baseball bat experiment for me? I wonder if I could talk him into boiling water chestnuts for me.

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prove it.

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I'm talking about a whole chestnut. How long til it turns to mush? I don't even know of a store that sells them in anything but a can. :shrug:

 

I just got some fresh ones this morning.

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