Eating Cactus in Tucson
December 12, 2007 | By Kelley Koehler | Filed Under About Tucson, Restaurants
My closest Fry’s Foods grocery store just finished remodeling, and they have a spectacular produce section now. As I walked into that section, they had a whole row of fresh chiles, with the vibrant greens and yellows and reds, made my eyes water a bit from the bite in the air the chiles were producing.
Around the corner I spotted nopales:
Nopales are pads of the Prickly Pear cactus. Note the grocery store provides tongs so you don’t have to pick them up with your bare hands!
I’ve never made nopales, but I’ve eaten it several times. You’ll find it mixed in with eggs, in soups, or otherwise as part of a filling. The flavor has been described as a “lemony cross between asparagus and green beans” and “somewhat tart green bean flavor.”
If you don’t prepare it properly, it can be, well, a bit slimy. That, and they come with cactus spines attached, so removing those can be a bit of a chore, or so I’m told. You can buy them sliced and canned in the local grocery stores, but you loose a lot of the flavor.
But aren’t they beautiful? Those are sitting beside chayotes, by the way, a kind of squash.
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While searching for a recipe for buñuelos today, I also noticed Doña Martha also shows us how to cook nopales!
I’m not brave enough to try to make them myself – nopales, that is, not bunuelos!
[...] (flat pad cactus), cooked, 1 Jar (30 oz) – You can use fresh cactus if your grocery has them, but you’d need to pre-cook and do stuff to them that I don’t have the understanding to [...]