Cactus fries and other "Americanized"* recipes for nopales?

I’m trying to learn to love prickly pear cactus pads. Why? Unlike any other plant besides saltbush and tumbleweed, they grow in my yard without soil amendments, supplemental water, weeding, or care of any kind. They are nutritious, high in fiber, and basically super healthy.
I realize that to start learning to love my bumper crop of springtime nopalitos, I have to find an easy way to turn them into typical US American comfort food. Which leads me to childhood and things like mac and cheese, pizza, and fries. What are people making with nopales that might appear on a typical, kid-friendly, US American table? Alternatively for life-long nopales lovers in any country, what is the nopales recipe that you first remember really liking in childhood?
For starters, this recipe for Cactus Fries comes from Savor the Southwest via PBS.
*"Americanized" is used in Wikipedia's Cactus Fries entry

I have no idea if I'll ever get a bumper crop from my single little plant in my climate, but I'm sure hoping people come up with some good ideas, hopefully that don't require deep frying.

Would cubed into a Mac and Cheese sauce, or potatoless potato salad work?

My fave cooking method for nopales is to slice them in thin strips and stir fry. They go well in Asian dishes this way (and fried rice is certainly one of those dishes that you could say is pan-cultural by now). If you pick them before the spines develop you don't even need to peel them.

Another place they go well is in gumbo and other thick soups, since they have similar qualities to okra. Which makes me think that you could probably batter or bread them just like deep fried okra, which is hands down a Southern food of the gods.

Phil, thank you for sharing about picking the pad when young before they developed spines.  That is pricesless.

my grandma used to fry up cactus.  She would cut it up and steam it to remove most of the slime.  Then she fried it up in bacon grease and salted it.  It tasted a little like okra, but way better.  Okra hopes it can taste that good someday.

I dredge chopped nopales in cornmeal and/or garbanzo flour and pan fry, ends up like fried okra.

Help people!!! What does okra taste like??? Everyone keeps comparing nopales to okra, and okra doesn't grow in my ecosystem and I've never seen it in local grocery stores.

Jay Angler wrote:Help people!!! What does okra taste like??? Everyone keeps comparing nopales to okra, and okra doesn't grow in my ecosystem and I've never seen it in local grocery stores.

Ok... here's an attempt. It's like... a mucilagenous (think aloe) cross between asparagus and green beans. They're the flat, spiny, vaguely pingpong paddle shaped cactus, with pretty blossoms on the edges, in season.

Jay writes,

What does okra taste like???

Imagine eating big purslane leaves with a firm and fuzzy outer layer and seeds that resemble those of eggplant.
Nopales don't have okra's fuzzy outer skin or the seeds. Like purslane and okra, they all have a mucilaginous interior. Since purslane is tiny, this little bit of slime is palatable. However, okra and nopales have more goo and I like to eliminate some of that texture through cooking nopales pieces in a little olive oil until most of the slime evaporates.

It makes a good addition to traditional cole slaw if not too much is added. 10-15% is about right. I could see it working in potato salad but not sure. The gumbo idea seems like it would work very well. Will have to try that. My favorite way is fried & served as a side dish for enchiladas but I don't think that's what you are seeking. Have added a little to omelettes & fish tacos a few times while camping. Both were different but quite good.  

Jury is out on using it in mac & cheese. I reverse engineered a mac & cheese recipe from a restaurant that is famous for it. In my opinion it would be hard to beat that but I might try adding some once just to see how it goes.

There is also the option to make it into jelly & jam.

My favorite way to eat the nopales pads is how a restaurant I liked served them. They simmered them in chicken broth, with some green chile, then mostly drained. It was served on the table with the chips and salsa to dip your chips in.
I loved it and always got extra of it with guacamole and more chips.

Edit, after thinking about it...
If I were trying to hide it in amercianized food, I'd use something like what I described in nachos or on pizza. Would go really well in sushi too, but if you are having issues with nopales being weird, sushi is probably out.
The way I liked the prickly pear fruit best was a batch of jam that didn't set up right that made excellent pancake syrup!
Pick the fruit with tongs, and burn off the spines before you touch them, those are nasty thorns. When we did it we had a grill going, and were dropping them on the grill to burn off spines before taking them and the peels came right off at that point. At that point, treat it like any other fruit to make jelly or syrup.

I've never had an Americanized version of them, but I could see them prepared as a jam, chicken fried (in strips), in gumbo, or maybe in jambalaya, and I think quite a few casserole type dishes could support them, well. A few decades ago, I had them at a Puerto Rican friend's house, prepared much like the ones Pearl described, simmered with the chilis. I have added them to fajitas, peeled, marinated, & grilled. The more I think about this, I think I'd like to try the fresh pads charred, and slipped of the skin (like you'd do to fire roast bell peppers), then cut into strips, left uncovered in the fridge, to dry overnight, then a 3part dredge with Cajun spices, and deep fried...

John says he thinks it would be a good jello salad. I think it would be a funny one, lol.

Mike writes:

Have added [cactus] to omelettes & fish tacos a few times while camping. Both were different but quite good.

When I read Mike’s post, something occurred to me: I’m missing the association between a wonderful experience (such as camping) and the meal (includes cactus pads).
Similarly, Pearl writes lovingly about the cactus meal she enjoyed in a memorable restaurant adventure:

My favorite way to eat the nopales pads is how a restaurant I liked served them. They simmered them in chicken broth, with some green chile, then mostly drained. It was served on the table with the chips and salsa to dip your chips in.
I loved it and always got extra of it with guacamole and more chips.

I can relate to this. Thanks to the unique experience of hot tea, saki, miso soup and wasabi, I crave sushi and adore seaweed salad. Making sushi at home comes out of the memory of the dining experience.
Looking at the bounty of cactus outside my window, I experience zero hunger pangs. I cannot imagine loving it. So I realize if I am to enjoy cactus pads, I’ve got to find a positive experience with this unfamiliar (maybe even repellant) superfood. Originally, I intended to adulterate my earliest comfort foods with cactus. I hear this approach in Carla’s ideas about slipping nopales into Southern favorites which sound delicious.
And maybe it is also time for me to venture out of my comfort zone and try some cactus dishes at some truly authentic Mexican restaurants.

Amy Gardener wrote:I’ve got to find a positive experience with this unfamiliar (maybe even repellent) superfood.

I think the problem is expectations. The pads really don't have much flavor. They are not repellent.
Try this, you are in NM, go to a grocery store and buy a can or jar of them. Try those. That will probably break you of any ewww factor.
If you are afraid of something, try it the easy way first before you are winging it on your own. Canned or jarred are like any other canned vegetable, canned green beans taste like a green bean, but not as good. Canned nopales do too.

It's not an alien flavor, it's really not. And if you like seaweed salad, you can put some nopales in it easily!

:D

I'd just like to say that since most of my experience with cactus is through a friend who regularly ends up a bit of a pin cushion despite being careful, Carla and Pearl's comments about the BBQ and burning the spines off is *really* useful!

And Amy's:

I’ve got to find a positive experience with this unfamiliar (maybe even repellant) superfood.

Yes! Do it! I went to Japan as an exchange student when I was 17 yrs old. I had never eaten Japanese food in my life, and it's *very* different from English-influenced Canadian food. Yes, to this day there are still flavors I don't like (wasabi and its close cousin horse radish just don't work for me), but by and large, I came to love most of the foods I was offered. If you are surrounded by these plants, it is worth the time and effort to find recipes using them that you and your family will eat.

Following Pearl’s suggestion to purchase nopales, today I went to El Super (a mini-adventure), the main Mexican grocery store in Albuquerque. Instead of selecting the nopales in the jar, for $ .89 I bought the fresh pads in the produce section: four bright green, 1/4” thick, 10” oblong nopales pads that still had the glochids and four cleaned pads (no glochids).
I cooked the cleaned pads following the instructions from chef Rick Bayless in the video attached below. I decided to make nopalitos tacos using basic pico de gallo ingredients and Mexican spices: to the pan of cooked nopalitos I added 1 chopped white onion and 4 chopped garlic scapes then sautéed for 5 minutes. Then I added 3 seeded/chopped Romas and a large seeded/chopped jalapeño, 1/2 t cumin and 2 t red chile powder and cooked for another 5 minutes. The nopales shined: slightly lemony with a tender bite (no tough skin and no slime).
These nopales from Mexico are very different from those tough pads that I grow. Even the small pads here (Opuntia englemannii) have much rounder thicker skin. They produce excellent and abundant prickly pear fruits. It is possible that I am picking the pads too early in the season and need to wait for the bright green young pads. However, the young pads only grow to about 5” in diameter in one season: less than half the size of the Mexican cultivar.
To see if the larger and more tender oblong pads will grow in zone 7b, I planted the 4 pads with the stickers (stuck them into the dry silty sand to take root). Hopefully I will have this delicious culinary variety in my garden someday. Meanwhile, I’ll compare the flavor and texture of my Opuntia englemanni in a month or so when the pads are larger. It may be that the toughness of the local cactus is the trade-off for excellent fruit production.
Thanks for all the ideas everyone.

As mentioned a couple of months ago,

I planted the 4 pads with the stickers (stuck them into the dry silty sand to take root). Hopefully I will have this delicious culinary variety in my garden someday.

The El Super grocery store cactus pads have all rooted. At the top of 3 of the nopales, 2-3 new little pads are forming on all of the 4 pads! The tiny pads on these store-bought pads have grown from a red bud to a tiny green pad. I'm pleased that this experiment so far is a success.
For those who would like to try growing flavorful nopales, check your local Mexican grocery store for the full pads. Stick about 1/4 of the pad into the driest native dirt (no soil here) and see what happens. The planted pads face south in full sun, about 6" from the top of a 30" tall lava retaining wall (for extra winter warmth). The new baby pads have also oriented themselves directly south. The original cactus pads became quite thin while roots were establishing. When I saw that the roots were about an inch long (~3 weeks), I gave the plants a little water (~ a cup) every other day. While still slim, the pads have surpassed their original plumpness and are now about 3/8 inch thick.

I'm an American who has spent the last 7 or so winters in northeastern Mexico. My favorite way to cook nopales is to get some whole pads, slice them lengthwise but not all the way, so they're in strips but still connected at the base. Then cover them in a light layer of oil and salt and pepper (or whatever other spices you want), and grill them until they're lightly charred. If the fire is too hot, then the outside will be burned before the slime gets cooked off. If it's not hot enough, they end up too chewy. If you get it just right, it turns out kind of like the top side of a green bean casserole.

My second favorite way to eat them is sautéed with tomatoes and onions, then mixed with queso fresco (or mozzarella or ricotta or whatever) and some carbohydrates (the northeastern Mexican style would be in a gordita, but pita bread or pasta or potatoes work just as well). This ends up being a bit too slimy for my taste, if the ratio of nopales to other ingredients is too high. But if the whole dish is less than about 20% nopales, the slime doesn't overpower the other textures.

In response to a request for American-ish foods using edible nopal, the last batch I bought was already de-spined and sliced. I cut the slices into pieces about 1 - 1.5 cm, and brined it in a jar kept in the fridge until I could figure out what I wanted to make with it.  I used an online brining calculator to determine ratios of salt and water to add, such as this one Brine calculator

1. The nopal had been brined at least a week when I figured to put some of it in with free range ground beef, and soaked-then-drained chopped walnuts (to reduce the tannins).  I made patties and cooked them on either side in a skillet, just enough to reach safe temperature.  Then let them cool before freezing between non-stick layers of freezer paper.  Wow, I have been so happy each time I thaw out a patty. For me, the burger patty is more about portioning than a mandate for how I shall eat it, so I've subsequently put it in to tacos, salads, pasta, etc.  Very versatile!

2. Separately, a tortilleria in Chicago called El Milagro (that now uses non-GMO corn because of a tireless letter writing campaign by a woman I know) will make a ginormous bowl of their special Cactus Salad, that is, Ensalada de nopalitos.

It's got, as the base:

chunks of queso fresco

olive or grapeseed or corn oil

picked or live-fermented carrot coins and jalapenos

some shakes of red pepper, to taste

sauteed yellow onion

pinches of: cumin, turmeric, S & P

Chopped fresh cilantro (aka coriander leaves)

To which you could add all kinds of things.

Side note: Store bought, jarred cactus is not delectable.

Side note: Store bought, jarred cactus is not delectable.

haha   I bet not. In my Texan opinion jarred nopales is horribly wrong on so many levels.

I have a question if I may - is this a prickly pear or if not does the prickly have close edible relatives?

Doesn't look like a prickly pear to me. My guess is it's a close relative.

Photo of pinky Nopal SaladHere's the latest version of brined nopal, made into ensalada de nopalitos, with the colorful addition of beets.  See how pretty the onions turn out.

Note: I'm transitioning away from Google Drive, etc, and the link above is to a pic that the forum didn't like as an img.

Beautiful, Mari!
Does it taste as good as it looks? What is your brining method?
Thank you for sharing!