Water Chestnuts

For many Americans, water chestnuts are synonymous with the bland and crunchy yellowed coins that come in cans and taste primarily of the water and citric acid in which they're stored. And, if they're the only kind you've ever tried, their utterly unremarkable flavour can even be precisely what makes water chestnuts so appealing - like iceberg lettuce, they're a delightfully crisp and profoundly mild-tasting delivery system for whatever sauce or seasonings they're dressed in. But for those in the know, the canned specimens are nothing short of a travesty. That's because real water chestnuts - the fresh kind, that is - are fantastically flavourful and downright fruity: sweet and nutty and tart all at once, like a cross between a coconut and an apple, with the texture of an Asian pear. Tasted side by side, the two iterations have about as much in common with each other as a piece of tuna sashimi does with a can of water-packed chunk light. Fresh water chestnuts have a delectable crispness and delicate sweetness to their flavour that is entirely missing in the canned version,

Which is why, when it comes to cooking, "canned water chestnuts are barely an adequate substitute [for the fresh]," writes Eileen Yin-Fei Lo in Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking. She's so dismissive of them that she suggests buying jicama if you can't find the fresh stuff. Dunlop is a bit more forgiving, but only to a point: "I think it's okay to use canned water chestnuts if they are a minor element in a dish, added to give a little crunch rather than standing out on their own," she says. "I occasionally use them in meatballs, for example. But if they play a major role in a dish and you can't get the fresh ones, I'd say: Make another dish instead."