Chestnuts

Bam is the nut of the Korean chestnut tree, Castanea crenata, a deciduous tree of the beech family. Korean chestnuts were noted abroad very early: Chinese chronicles describing the third-century Mahan confederacy in the southwest report chestnuts as large as pears, and later histories say the same of Baekje.

Chestnuts are woven into Korean ritual. Peeled and trimmed into neat faceted shapes, they are piled high on the jesa table for ancestors, and at the pyebaek ceremony after a wedding the groom's parents toss chestnuts and jujubes to the bride as a wish for many children. In the cold months, vendors selling roasted chestnuts (gunbam) from street carts are a familiar sight.

Traditional native orchards were nearly wiped out by the chestnut gall wasp from around 1958, and growers replanted with resistant Korean and Japanese varieties; plantings expanded dramatically through the 1970s and 80s. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture names Hadong, Hamyang and Sancheong in South Gyeongsang, and parts of South Jeolla and North Jeolla, as major growing areas. Gongju, the old Baekje capital, markets its chestnuts as a specialty with some two thousand years of history; a Korean government culture webzine puts the city's harvest at about 8,000 tons a year, roughly 17 percent of the national crop, and notes local chestnut makgeolli and rice cakes.

In the kitchen chestnuts are boiled or roasted as snacks and cooked into bambap (rice with chestnuts), yaksik, and a porridge of chestnut and rice flour described in Joseon-period texts such as Sallim gyeongje.

• Starchy rather than oily: Unlike most nuts, chestnuts are low in fat and mostly carbohydrate, with useful fiber, per the Korean Food Composition Table.
• Vitamin C and potassium: Raw chestnuts supply a fair amount of vitamin C — unusual for a nut — and potassium; some vitamin C is lost in cooking.
• Allergies: Chestnuts are tree nuts, and people with a tree-nut allergy should ask an allergist whether chestnuts are safe for them.
• Sweetened forms: Candied and syrup-preserved chestnuts carry substantial added sugar.