A Prickly Supper Situation

I can remember my father-in-law telling me a story about ranching in South Texas.  He told me that there were times in the summer time where it was so hot and so dry that the cattle didn't have much to eat.  So they would take propane torches and burn the cactus.  Once the outer spines were burned off and the tough outer skin heated, it exposed the soft-watery inside of the cactus and the cows ate it up. 

Have you ever eaten cactus?  I hadn't until a year or so ago.  Tricia introduced me to it.  Cooked cactus is called nopalitos.  My wife got the recipe from Pati on PBS, specifically the recipe at this link: Pati's Nopalitos.  You can click on that link, but I'll just show in pictures what we did.  We have a prickly pear cactus growing in a pot by the air conditioning units.  In the past, we've shown you the pears that we get from this thing.

Tricia picked some of the young, tender cactus "paddles" and brought them in and washed them.

Here is a washed cactus on the cutting board.

Russ took a knife and cut the edges off.

Then he scraped the outer part with the knife, making doggone sure there were no cactus spines left!

Then he used a knife to dice up the cactus into cubes.

And here we are.  Diced nopales - ready to cook.

Put oil in the bottom of a pan and add the nopalitos, some salt, and sautee.  The cactus will emit a gelatinous liquid.  If you keep cooking, it will evaporate.

Add chopped onion, garlic, corn and chili peppers and a squeeze of lime juice and continue to cook.  Ready to eat!

Pretty doggone good!  No cactus spines in my tongue.