prickly pears: paid the cost to make the sauce

prickly pears are a new discovery in my life. we recently smuggled a couple of these cactus fruits through airport security on the way home from arizona, and then during marty's staff retreat he heroically harvested a bagful to bring home for my canning pursuits.


these little suckers are, indeed, prickly. as marty discovered while picking, and i rediscovered processing them. it's not the obvious spikes that get you - those are easy to avoid, but the nearly microscopic stickers that cover the flesh of the fruit and hide out around your house to be picked up weeks later in your fingertips. it's an infuriating sharp little pain when your hand brushes against something but you can't actually see them to pick them out. this culinary project is a labor of love.


marty caught my attention with the idea of prickly pear lemonade, so that was my first objective with the fruit. i consulted a few places online and they said you could just peel the prickly pears and blend up the raw flesh to add in equal parts to lemonade, so that's what i did. alternately, i think you can boil the whole fruits until they break down and strain them into the lemonade, but i wasn't convinced that the stickers wouldn't still be present and potentially lodge in my throat, making the whole lemonade experience regrettable, so i preferred to take the peeling precaution.


as instructed by garrett mccord of vanilla garlic, i cut both ends off the prickly pears, made a vertical slice down the side and peeled the skin and pricklies away. even my attempts at holding the fruit with tongs and paper towels failed at preventing me from getting stickers all over my fingers, so i took another approach and decided to burn the little buggers off on the stove prior to peeling the skin off.


i got this idea from somewhere online, too, though i can't recall where now. this worked pretty well, though i can't say whether the process was entirely pain-free from there on out just because i had a number of them already present in my hands.
i kept this tupperware container of prickly pear puree in the refrigerator and stirred it into several batches of lemonade. i think it would also make a lovely sorbet.


what i learned about prickly pears - other than that they are incredibly well-armed against domestic onslaught - is that they are quite tenacious and lasted a remarkably long time in the refrigerator waiting around for me to find the time to make jam. i left the bag of fruits in the fridge for a good couple weeks before this peeling process, and then i satisfied my prickly pear curiosity with some batches of prickly pear lemonade and left the rest of the skinned fruits in the fridge for another week or more before finally making them into jelly today. they ripened nicely in the fridge, and seemed none-the-worse for wear.


the process was a pretty simple one, now that the thorns have mostly faded out of my life. i put the insides of the prickly pears into the cuisinart and whirred them around a bit to loosen the flesh from the little black seeds. then i heated them up on the stove a bit to further that process, and added a touch of water. i strained the seeds from the juice using the splatter screen i normally put on top of pans when i'm frying - which is not the ideal implement for straining, but it's the only thing i had that resembled a strainer with holes small enough to keep the seeds out. it worked fine, though it would have been easier if it had a concave surface.


i then put the strained juice back on the stove and whipped up a small batch of jelly using my favorite pomona's pectin. i ended up with three very pretty jars of jelly - which win the best-jam-yet prize from marty, who says, "this is all i want on my toast from here on out."