Good crop of Prickly Pear juice this year

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Wyatt Burp

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From our backyard cactus's I just finished up 5 gallons of pure nopales flower (prickly pear?) juice with habanero or serrano peppers thrown in for a big kick. I have to carefully peal 50 fruits per gallon without getting stickers in me, blend and strain. It's very time consuming but tastes great. But I can't explain the flavor or what it relates to. We make extreme hot nopales/Habanero salsa from the plant petals, too.
EDIT: I checked recipes on how to thin the juice out and added orange juice. It tastes great and I'll do that for now on.

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Decades ago, I remember passing by a prickly pear "farm" (for lack of a better word) that was located east of Monterey/Carmel on the way to Laguna Seca track. Never knew why someone would do that, so you just educated me on a possible use......
 
Very nice! Nopales are SO good!! Like tangy green beans in flavor, go great with eggs and things!! :D
 
Now that looks and sounds interesting to me. I got around the world in my younger years and tried a lot of food and drink not "native" to me, but never tried much that came from cactus.
Have a Son stationed in Twentynine Palms, Ca., maybe if I drop some hints he can bring me some of these when he gets home on leave. Not much cactus where I live.
 
Doogie85 said:
Now that looks and sounds interesting to me. I got around the world in my younger years and tried a lot of food and drink not "native" to me, but never tried much that came from cactus.
Have a Son stationed in Twentynine Palms, Ca., maybe if I drop some hints he can bring me some of these when he gets home on leave. Not much cactus where I live.
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Looks like you have to hold a gun on them, (preferably an old beautiful Colt), so you can peel them. :-)

Have a blessed day,

Leon
 
Wow, you peeled 250 prickly pears? That is quite a task. The most I've done at once was maybe 6. You must be a champ! I used to make prickly pear limeade that was delicious. It had a bright magenta color that was so pretty and nice to serve to guests for something special. Getting the skins off without getting pricked is tricky though. How do you do it? Do you wear gloves?
 
Grip_Maker's_Wife said:
Wow, you peeled 250 prickly pears? That is quite a task. The most I've done at once was maybe 6. You must be a champ! I used to make prickly pear limeade that was delicious. It had a bright magenta color that was so pretty and nice to serve to guests for something special. Getting the skins off without getting pricked is tricky though. How do you do it? Do you wear gloves?
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I have to be in the right state of mind and set my IPad on our patio table watching videos and I can do 50 fruits in about an hour. I take my time, like Wilford Brinkley says in "Crossfire Trail", "Take your time. You'll have a more harmonious outcome". So I make it therapeutic.
 
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We have acres of prickly pears. When we first moved, my wife was making jelly from the tunas which was very good. They are covered with stickers (called glochids), which are like tiny fishhooks, and we would burn them off with a propane torch, which is the best way to do it. We sort of lost interest after several years (too much work) and haven't done that for a long time. The local Mexicans do all sorts of things with the pads, but we never tried. In some drier parts of south and west Texas, the prickly pear pads provide about all of the cattle feed there is, and the ranchers burn off the spines with propane torches so cattle can eat them.
 
There's a small town brewery here in Texas that occasionally makes a beer flavored with the stuff:

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I tried it once. It was not bad, but it was not my idea of good beer either.
 
Here's my visual reference picture for how much peppers and other stuff to put in our green nopales salsa from the same plants. I use "petals" no bigger tha 12" long. They get tough after that. I have five large bags cleaned and diced in the freezer for off season. This is very time consuming, too. I clean and dice 'em and my wife makes it. The ratio of habenaro & serrano peppers here are buttburnin' scorching hot, but good! And you just need a little on food because the nopales flavor goes far. Nopales is similar in taste to tomatillos, IMO.


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Rustyt1953 said:
Matt, many years ago, while working out west, I tried cactus jelly on biscuits.

I sure admired how good it was. Now I have a hankerin' for it.
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Jelly sounds good! Same with that prickly pear beer posted earlier.
UPDATE! If anyone tries this, I just diluted it somewhat with orange juice and it's excellent. It was pretty thick and orange juice thins it and gives a tangy taste without overpowering the cactus fruit flavor. A big improvement and stretches it out.
 
I had some wine made from those....a long time ago. It was a beautiful magenta color and was on the dry side, and very tasty.
 
They sell prickly pear here in the grocery stores. I never tried it because I never knew what to do with it. I need check out recipes for it.

I recently read about Jackfruit and I just got 11 pounds of it. LOL I think I over did it. Since then I found it can be bought in small cans. Go figure.
Jackfruit can replace pulled pork and meat for vegetarians. I like eating Jackfruit raw for a snack and it has a sweet taste to it.
 
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