Show Prickly pear juice is made from a fruit native to Mexico and South America, but it can be found in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, and parts of the Middle East. It is known for its thick spiny skin and soft, sweet, & watery interior. There are many varieties, but the most well known are green, red, yellow, brown and pink. It’s the perfect summer fruit, it tastes like a weird combination of pear, cucumber, watermelon and pineapple. It has only one monstrous defect, besides the tiny spines that line its exterior, the flesh of the fruit is riddled with seeds. It is commonly used to make drinks, candy, or jelly. You can find them at your local Mexican or Hispanic market. I found them at my favorite grocery store, Crown Valley Market Place in Mission Viejo or you can find them at El Nopal Market in San Juan Capistrano. They are in season from early spring to late fall.  To prepare them, use a paring knife to cut off both ends of the fruit and make a 1/4 of an inch deep cut lengthwise. Please, please, please wear gloves when working with this fruit. Even though you can find them without the large spines at the store, the tiny and almost hair like spines remain and can get lodged in your flesh. They truly are tiny! Place your finger in between the flesh and the outer skin and simply pull back, the outer layer should come off easily. You can store them in your refrigerator for up to a week or at room temperature if you are going to eat them in one or two days. The Recipe: Prickly Pear JuiceMy favorite preparation is this prickly pear juice. After prepping the fruit, cut it into slices, place it in the blender, barely cover it with water and blend it for 10 – 20 seconds. Strain the liquid to remove the seeds and serve over ice. The addition of basil or mint makes a good pairing, and if you want to get creative or boozy add it to your margarita. Another way to eat them is sliced and sprinkled with chile powder, but I recommend that you swallow the seeds whole, since they are very hard and quite annoying. It is a summer fruit worth trying.
There are many benefits to moving to the beach. Not only do I get to wake up to the sounds of the ocean waves crashing, daily walks on the beach are a real thing. When we moved houses last year, I was delighted to move into a home with lush landscape and palm trees all around. Decorating the backyard are also these massive cacti with crowns of deep plum-colored fruit. I’ll be honest. I didn’t pay much attention to them until several months ago when I saw them at the market for $10 a pound with bottled juice for even more. That was the day I made my own prickly pear juice. A quick scan online indicated that a menacing, arduous task was ahead of me but today, I’ve brought you my easy method that has always yielded me thick, delicious nectar. The most important thing to consider is avoiding the seemingly harmless glochids embedded all around the pear. They call it a prickly pear for good reason. Though the cactus pad is much more obvious with its spiky warning, these little baby spines will irritate you to no end if you have the misfortune of getting them lodged in your hands. It’s best to avoid them altogether and the best way I found is through some heavy duty tongs. Ripe pears will twist off easily and I plop each one down into a paper bag with them. I learned the hard way that plastic bags are best to be avoided. After you’ve collected your fruit, it’s best to tumble them in warm water several times. Some folks like to burn off the spiky hairs but brushing each one down vigorously with a brush works well for me. If fresh prickly pears don’t grow in your area, don’t despair. They’ve been popping up everywhere and if you purchase them at a store, they’ve most likely already been prepped and are recipe-ready. You can peel each fruit but for a deeper color {and, let’s face it- for convenience} but I like to blend up the entire pear. A trickle of water just to get the blender going will produce happy, vibrant juice that you strain in order to catch its hard seeds and voila! You can watch my friend Jenny over at Organically Blissful do this step by step and then apply it for not just this juice but any juice you want! Afterwards, you can feel good about making your very own, homemade prickly pear juice that’s as beautiful as it is delicious and nutritious. Prickly pear is anti-inflammatory, rich in antioxidants and vitamin c and can we just talk about that color? It’s insanely gorgeous and will be a wonderful addition to my true red velvet cakes later.
Homemade Prickly Pear Cactus Juice
Jump to Recipe Print Recipe If you have ever wondered how to make prickly pear juice, now is your chance. Prickly pears can range from gorgeous pink fruits with a berry-like taste to yellow ones with a tropical flavour. The juice is perfect to enjoy on its own or to blend with other beverages like cocktails. About Prickly PearsPrickly pears go by several names, like cactus berry, barbary fig, and tuna in Spanish. They come from the nopal cactus (Opuntia) which has paddle-shaped leaves and grows in different parts of the Americas including the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean. There are several varieties of prickly pears ranging from deep pink to red, green, or yellow and brown even. The challenge with dealing with them is that they are very prickly on the outside due to being a cactus fruit. Once you get inside, it is worth it, though, as the inner pulp is a deep colour like the outer skin. Prickly pears have an interesting sweet but subtle flavor profile that is a unique combination of watermelon and bubble gum. While the cactus plants grow all year, the fruit doesn’t tend to be ready to harvest until late summer to December. As a result, there is just a short time to enjoy these cactus fruits. Nutritionally, these fruits have plenty of vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and more. In fact, a single prickly pear includes approximately 5 percent of the daily recommended intake for calcium. What is Agua de Tuna?This juice is basically pureed prickly pear pulp that has been strained to remove the seeds. In this juice recipe, I also recommend the addition of some limes for some added tang and fruitiness, but they are optional. Mint leaves are also great for a refreshing flavor. A little agave syrup is an excellent inclusion, especially since you may want the juice a little sweeter to add to smoothies, margaritas, and other beverages. While you could utilize another syrup like honey, I recommend agave syrup because it is more authentic to Mexico. This syrup comes from the blue agave plant and is actually sweeter than refined white sugar. I give the option of adding it to taste, so you can determine how much to add depending on the preference of your taste buds. How to Handle and Peel Prickly PearsIf you are lucky enough to live in a place where prickly pears grow, you may be able to harvest them yourself. You should either wear thick rubber gloves to harvest them or use tongs to pull the fruit from the cactus because they are prickly. Once you have them in hand, wash them under cold running water. While doing that, I also recommend that you scrub them with a brush because that will help remove the prickles on the exterior of the fruit, otherwise known as the glochids. If you purchased your prickly pears from the store, you may be able to skip this step as the glochids are usually removed before being sold. You will need to peel the prickly pears as they have a tough skin and you want to get to the flesh for the juice. You should wear gloves or utilize tongs for this step because there still might be some prickles on the prickly pears. The best way to peel the prickly pears is to trim the ends followed by slicing the skin down the length of the fruit. Now you can peel away the skin in one large sheet and free the fruit inside. Once you have the prickly pears prepared and peeled, making the juice is easy. Simply add the full prickly pears to a blender. To flavor the juice you can add lime juice or mint leaves, and some agave syrup for sweetness. You may think that you should add some water at this step, but it shouldn’t be necessary. Prickly pears have a lot of natural moisture that they should blend quite well without the need for additional liquid. Next, set a fine-mesh sieve over a bowl and pour the juice through. This is to remove the seeds from the fruit and to give you a nice, smooth juice. At this stage, you can feel free to taste and add additional lime juice and agave syrup if needed. Once prepared, you can drink the juice as is or diluted with water, use it in a recipe, or place it in the fridge in a sealed container until you are ready to enjoy it. How to Use this JuiceUsing your homemade juice may be the most fun part of this recipe. You could certainly enjoy it as it is if desired, as the fruit is so sweet and flavourful already. It should keep fresh in the fridge for between 2 and 3 days. Of course, if you won’t be able to use the juice within that time or have a lot of prickly pears to process, you could simply divide the juice between ice cubes trays to freeze until you are ready to use it. These ice cubes are wonderful to add to cold beverages or water for some extra natural flavour. Additionally, you could blend them into smoothies in place of regular ice or pulse them into frozen margaritas. Other possibilities are to use the juice in vinaigrettes, add it to marinades, or turn it into a fruit curd for a pie. There are so many possibilities with this lovely, exotic fruit. Other Fruit Recipes You’ll Love:Servings 3 cups pure juice
To add a refreshing mint flavor, you can blend a few mint leaves together with the prickly pears. |
How to make cactus fruit juice
Pos Terkait
Copyright © 2024 ketiadaan Inc.
