The Nopales Test

This post is a little bit different than the usual.

This is more of a chronicle of an experiment than an actual recipe. Forgive my ignorance on the subject of Nopales, while I'm sure there are lots of great recipes out there for them, I have somehow avoided ever having cooked prickly pear cactus ever before. Yes for those of you in the dark, Nopales are indeed the cooked pads of the Prickly Pear cactus. It's something of standard fare in Mexican dining, and apparently makes for a great addition to salads, or as a part of fresh salsa. For me though this was a novelty, and definitely an exciting one.

 Our son has a fascination with cacti, he's 3 now, so its really the simple things that intrigue him. And I'd agree with him that by all rights cacti are pretty awesome. So I really bought this Nopal for my son, but preparing it can be a pain. I'd recommend you try it though, even if like me, it's mostly for the novelty.

To prepare the Nopal firstly, you'll have to cut all of the thorns out of the cactus pad. Sometimes you'll buy Nopal de-thorned.... wait. is thorn even the right word? Should it be spike? spine? Ah well, you know what I mean, the sharp pointy bits. Cut them out of the cactus pad and try not to get pricked. Also try not to utterly destroy the cactus in the process. This is easier said than done, and make note, this will take some time to do.


Once you've cut off the thorns you'll want to rinse off the cactus and start cutting it up into small pieces. Small is essential because you're going to need to cook this for quite a while before its ready to be eaten. Why you may ask... because of the CACTUS SLIME.

Cactus slime is gross. Seriously gross, and Nopals are full of it. So boiling or frying out all of the sap is essential before eating. As you can see I cut up the Nopal and put it in the pot with a third of a yellow onion, as well as 3 cloves of garlic and a teaspoon of salt. then I just covered it all with water and boiled it on low for 40 minutes. When it was finished I double rinsed the veggies to make sure they weren't at all slimey.

This is the jumping off point for Nopales, here's where you might want to put it into a tomato sauce for pasta, or add it to your Never the Same Chili along with some jalapenos, red pepper, and sweet corn for a Mexican style meal. In our case we already had a main course ready to go in some yummy Curry Carrot Soup (recipe for that to come to TFL sometime down the road), so all we needed the Nopales for was a side. I added some more salt for seasoning and served as it.

Our son, being 3, was not interested in actually easting it. Erica and I however thought it tasted pretty good. Kind of like diced green beans. I have a feeling it would be even better as a part of a larger meal though instead of a side. Maybe we'll try it again one of these days, and I'll of course let you know how it turns out.

Never the Same Chili

I love my crock pot.  Working full time I get home and have about 20 minutes before I need to get dinner on the table and feed my ravenous boys.  Needless to say without any prep work I would hardly be able to manage anything outside of a bowl of cereal on a daily basis.  Chili is a staple in our house and I am a big fan of pre-soaking dried beans beforehand rather than spending the extra cash on the canned ones.  

The chili recipe below should just be used as a guide, every time we put it together it comes out a bit differently but I figure that is part of the fun.  I have also been trying to cook a bit more vegetarian food recently so did not include meat below but you can easily add ground beef, ground pork (our favorite!) or ground turkey, I would just suggest precooking it before adding it to the pot.

What you need:

• Around two 14oz cans or 3 cups of diced tomatoes
• 4 good sized handfuls of  dried beans soaked overnight (I use garbanzo beans, black beans, kidney beans and red beans)
• Around half a head of crushed garlic
• 1 – 3 tablespoons of chili powder depending on how spicy you want it
• 1 tablespoon of salt (more to taste as needed) 
• 1 medium sized chopped onion
• Whatever veggies you happen to have, my usual choices are carrot, celery, pepper (whatever color), broccoli and eggplant 
•  A bit of grated cheese as a tasty garnish

Throw everything in the crock pot and give it all a good stir.   Cook it on low for around 8 hours, stir it every few hours to make sure it does not stick to the pot.  If it seems to be dry I usually add about ½ a cup of water to help.  Serve with rice and a bit of grated cheese!  This will make a ton of chili so we always have leftovers, for whatever reason it usually tastes better the next day.