Harvesting and processing prickly pear fruit

Believe it or not the desert is ripe with things to eat. Only problem is they are all covered in thorns or spines.

The prickly pear cactus fruit is no exception with it's microscopic thorns. If you look closely at the picture below you will see that each of those unassuming little white dots are actually clusters of thorns or glochids if you want to use the technical term.

Prickly pear fruits are rich in vitamin C and quite tasty to eat. The most common way to process the fruit is to turn it into a liquid. You can make lots of things from the juice such as prickly pear lemonade, popsicles and jelly. 

I start by washing the fruits in the sink. Just to get the dust off. Then using tongs and pairing knife I cut the top and bottom off then slice in half.

Using the tongs I toss the prepared fruit into the food processor. Don't worry about cleaning off the glochids the cheese cloth will filter them out.

Then I puree them until they are liquid.

 Pour the juice and pulp into a double layer of cheese cloth and strain until it doesn't drip anymore.

I don't have a picture for some reason, but I put the strained juice from the bowl into a mason jar and froze it. I toss the pulp as it has all the glochids and seeds. Then I carefully and thoroughly wash the cheese cloth to be used again.

So harvesting and preserving the bounty of prickly pear fruits is really easy. I'll keep you posted on what I end up making out of the juice. Don't you love the purple color?!