Prickly Pear Fruit Harvesting 101
by Chef Amber Sampson
Amber Sampson is an artistic, creative, passionate activist, public speaker, researcher, and chef who loves exploring the world through food. Currently, Sampson holds a degree in Cultural Anthropology and a second degree in Food Systems Sustainability. She is a trained professional Chef with a degree in Culinary Arts and Nutrition. Using food as a universal language, her research focuses on the relationship between food and culture. Her work brings present-day relevance to ancient meals, people, and customs, giving others a taste and connection to our delicious past, revealing a more sustainable and understanding future. You can find Sampson in the warm Southwestern desert of Arizona, teaching culinary, foraging, cooking, researching, gardening, and exploring our tasty past. She will graduate from the program in May 2023.
Growing under scorching hot sun and dry treacherous conditions, the Southwest Desert is home to many unique and specifically adapted species. Each plant holds a special place in the hearts of those who live within the heat, yet none have been so synonymous with the Sonoran Desert of the American Southwest than the esteemed cactus. Decorated with bright red fruit, the ovate, elongated sage green pads of the low-growing prickly pear cactus dwarf in comparison to the mighty saguaro and seem almost friendly when paralleled to the deadly jumping cholla, but this workhorse of the desert is not to be underestimated. Belonging to the family Cactaceae and the genus opuntia, these cacti are called tuna, sabra, nopal from the nahuatl word nōpalli, Indian fig, luiseno, navut, cahuilla, and navit, but they are most commonly referred to as “prickly pear cactus.” However, introducing it by genus and species with its Latin name downplays these plants’ importance to the indigenous people of the Southwest. For the peoples of the Southwest, the prickly pear is more than just a cactus—it is a way of life. A symbol of food, faith, colonization, changing times, drought survival, medicine, and more, this cactus represents the past, present, and resilient future of its desert-dwelling inhabitants.
In the Fall of 2020, I had the honor of taking the Wild and Foraged Foods class with our very own encyclopedia of information, the kind and brilliant Professor Netta Davis. The course was taught through the “Learn From Anywhere” programming and created a global foraging community. Since that course, I have been harvesting and working with my local indigenous community, the O'odham, on whose native land I reside. For anyone who wishes to learn and hopefully harvest this fall, I have created this basic guide to prickly pear cactus fruit foraging from my own experience, research, and work as a chef and anthropologist with the O'odham. Below you will find all the tricks, tools, and recipes you need for a safe, respectful, and honorable harvest.
As September walks its way into October, bright red fruit sit like ornaments atop the green prickly pear cactus, which decorate the medians along city streets and highways; these cacti grow everywhere from perfectly manicured front lawns to dry riverbeds. Varieties of the cactus grow indigenously from as far north as Peace River Western Canada, along California coastlines, and down to the tip of South America. Native to North America, prickly pear cactus belong to the large genus of opuntia, which boasts 150 to 180 species of flat-jointed cactus under the Cactaceae family. In the 17th century, prickly pear was distributed to Australia to establish the cochineal dye industry and eventually found sunny, dry homes in Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Southern Europe. However, the low-growing, shrub-like cactus thrives best in the dry desert of the Southwest and Mexico at 3,000 to 4,000-foot elevation ranges. If you live in any of these climates, chances are, every fall you can enjoy the sweet fruits of a prickly pear cactus.
Taste: Prickly pear fruit has a uniquely complex floral flavor. The juice is a bright fuchsia purple color, unparalleled by anything in the natural kingdom. Raw, the fruit has a taste and slightly fibrous texture similar to a pear, with notes of hibiscus and green bell pepper. The juice magnifies these refreshing qualities. As a syrup, it’s luxurious on your tongue, hitting your nose with notes of cherry blossom, honey, and fig. You can try and replicate these flavors by mixing mango, hibiscus, and pear juice, but you will never truly understand its tantalizing flavor until you forage it yourself.
Preparation: Once fall has arrived, be on the lookout for red dotted cactus. A safe way to know your fruit is ready to be collected is that the flowers have long since faded and dried, and you can see plumpness on the fruit. It will look meaty, like an overly plump pear or mango. If the fruit skin seems dry or wrinkled, it may be hanging on from last year, or you may need to give it water in the seasons leading up to your fall harvest. If you have identified a safe space clear of visible trash, contaminants, and critters, you may begin your honorable harvest. Be it your first time around a cactus or your millionth walk in the desert, treat the plant with respect. I humbly call the Desert of Arizona home, as do the indigenous people of this land, the O’odham, who have been harvesting and cultivating prickly pear cactus for over 4,000 years. My harvest may not seem monumental, but if all foragers took more than they needed, we would soon be in a space of scarcity. So, when beginning your harvest, please keep these ancient indigenous rules of sustainable cultivation known as “The Honorable Harvest” in mind:
Ask permission of the ones whose lives you seek. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Take only what you need and leave some for others.
Use everything that you take.
Take only that which is given to you.
Share it, as the Earth has shared with you.
Be grateful.
Reciprocate the gift.
Sustain the ones who sustain you, and the Earth will last forever.
(Words from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer)
I always begin my harvest by talking out loud. I announce my presence to the space as if I were entering someone’s home and asking to remove my coat. Then I make an offering. Do this at your religious comfort level. I found the most naturally beneficial thing to do is pour water on the plant as my gift or offering. This is helpful as a sign of respect and also biologically to the plant after your harvest. Be careful, though—many creatures call these prickly pears home, so after your water offering, pause for one more moment and see if any friends slither, crawl, or hop away. Your goal is to collect dinner, not become dinner.
Next, I ask permission to gather. If I perceive a “yes,” I will grab my supplies and continue.
Harvesting: Harvesting is the fun part! Gloves on, I take my time collecting. Whether I’m alone or with company, I talk out loud to the plant. I discuss what I’m going to do with all the ripe, juicy fruit. You can easily knock the fruit into your bucket with your tongs or grab from the top, being careful to not prematurely rip the skin, and give it a little twist. This should easily pop the fruit from the plant and allow you to pick with ease. As I pick, I make sure to walk around the plant, collecting from several locations to have an even harvest. Take no more than 50% if it’s your home plant and no more than 10% if it’s a plant in the wild where other foragers may come to collect. When done, give a quick thank you to the plant and the space. It’s the least you can do for the free food you just collected. You can harvest from one cactus or take your time finding several from which to collect. Once your bucket is halfway full, replace the lid for 24 hours to kill any bugs that may have hopped a ride, and bring the bucket into a cool, dry place outside to wait for cleaning.
Cleaning: Cleaning is the step where you work to remove the glochids, tiny hair-like spikes that can get stuck in your fingers or ruin your syrup. With a little bit of elbow grease, they are easy to remove. The method I use is agitation. After waiting 24 hours for any critters to die, you will submerge your bucket of fruit in water. I usually do this in the backyard with the garden hose. Then, similar to the way you rinse rice, you will take a large stick and swirl the fruit around. Wait a moment, and you will see the small white spikes float to the top. Pour off the water, rinse, and repeat three more times. After a few cycles of agitation, 99% of the glochids are gone, and you’re ready to process them for juice.
Processing: At this stage, you are getting the fruit ready to be juiced. My method of juicing comes from Southwest forager John Slattery and uses evidence from the archaeological record for how the ancestral O'odham would juice their own prickly pear. I enjoy this method, but you may follow a number of different juicing techniques. I have found that this method works best when you have collected over thirty pounds of fruit, which is approximately my average harvest size. If you only have twenty fruits, juicing by hand may be easier.
I start with gloves on to prevent staining, and then, over newspaper, cut my fruit in half lengthwise or cut the top off. The top is hard and calloused from producing a recent flower, so removing this section will aid juice extraction; cutting will also help release juice later. Once cut, I put all the fruit in a clean cotton pillowcase and... put it in the freezer! This may sound silly, but it’s the best method for extracting the most juice with the least amount of mess. The pillowcase of fruit sits on a half sheet pan in the freezer for two to three days. I’m a pastry chef, and we usually freeze our cakes before decorating. In cakes, this helps the crumb stay moist as it thaws. The same method applies to the fruit. When they are frozen, the fruits swell as water content crystallizes, sealing in the juice. This method produces a greater amount of juice. Wait for it to freeze, and move on to the next step.
Processing the juice: This step looks funny, but it actually requires the least amount of work. Set up a large bucket outside on the morning of a hot day. This is another benefit of foraging in the Southwest. Essentially, you are creating an enormous juicer aided by gravity and the sun. First, place the bucket underneath a large strainer, similar to how you might juice lemons on a large scale. I found both these tools at my local Asian supermarket and keep them year after year for my prickly pear harvesting. Next, you will place the bags of frozen fruit-filled pillowcases on top of the strainer. Finally, collect every brick and dumbbell in your house to compress the fruit. Be patient, and as the sun rises, the frozen fruit will begin to thaw. After about an hour, you will hear the small drip, drip, drip of juice being expelled from the fruit in the bag. This token dripping sound always makes me smile and reminds me of the dripping of sap from maple trees tapped for syrup. Each drop will become part of the juice. Wait a day or two for the sun and gravity to do its job, and you should have a bucket full of juice by sunset by that night.
Once your fruit has been pressed of all its juice, remove the weights, and give the pillowcase a few more squeezes; I like to press with a potato masher if I’m greedy for every last drop. Then, get ready to collect your juice. I separate the dried fruit from the pillowcase. You can save the skins at this point and dehydrate them to make powders for lipsticks, paint, creams, and more, or you can compost the scraps. Take your juice and strain it once to collect any particles that may have fallen during the days of dripping, and bottle the juice. At this point, you can go directly to making the syrup, save it in the fridge for a week, or place it in the freezer for several months. I like to make the juice into syrup in the fall and save the rest for spring.
Making the syrup: You have made it to your final step: creating syrup from all your hard work! Follow the recipe below and boil your juice with honey, orange juice, and zest. It will reduce slightly. You also want to boil the juice for food safety reasons, as you really should not drink the juice raw. Once the juice has been boiled, I store it in jars in the fridge for up to three weeks and keep the rest of the jars in the freezer for three to five months. The O'odham thrived through thousands of scorching desert summers by staying hydrated with prickly pear products. This syrup is fantastic added to sparkling water as an extremely hydrating drink that rivals Gatorade, or you can mix it up in margaritas or use as a marinade for wild game, a dipping sauce for cactus fries, or as a vinaigrette for salads. Best of luck in all your prickly pear foraging adventures, stay safe, and enjoy the fruits of your labor!