Now when you pick a pawpaw
Or a prickly pear
And you prick a raw paw
Well, next time, beware
Don’t pick the prickly pear by the paw
When you pick a pear
Try to use the claw
Lyrics from “The Bare Necessities” from Disney’s The Jungle Book
Fruit… from a cactus?
I lived in California when I was younger, so that little mention of prickly pears in Baloo the Bear’s “Jungle Book” song was the first time I’d heard of such a thing.
After moving to Arizona, I saw these bright red fruits everywhere — not so much at grocery stores, but instead studding hundreds of cacti that were growing in parks and people’s gardens.
There are a lot of things you learn as a kid: Don’t put your hand on a hot stove. Don’t put your finger in the pencil sharpener. (Oops.) Don’t touch a cactus.
It turns out mom was wrong on the last one there… provided it’s done carefully.
A cactus by any other name…
The prickly pear has a lot of different names, but that doesn’t mean you have necessarily heard any of them.
For instance, these fruits are also known as an Indian figs, desert pears, cactus pears, and in Mexico it’s tunas… or, if you want to get technical, you can call it by its botanical name, Opuntia ficus indica.
ALSO SEE: What are the best tropical fruits? 15 exotic types to try
So what do you do with prickly pears?
While perhaps not as versatile as American staples like apples, oranges and bananas, these little guys can still do a lot.
Apart from eating the fruit as-is (after carefully removing the spines, of course) you can make cactus pear jam or jelly, use the juice in meat marinades and salad dressings, or as the basis for a sweet cocktail syrup.
These babies are also nutritious. Compared to a regular Bartlett pear, for example, prickly pears have more than three times the vitamin C. (See the data here: typical pears and the cactus variety.)
As a bonus, they’re high in antioxidants. The juice of the prickly pear in the super-colorful red-purple variety packs the most power.
That cactus fruit syrup may be the best thing of all. Because with that, you can make prickly pear margaritas, with a natural cotton candy pink color. (The gorgeous example below is from Arizona’s own Peppermill restaurant in Tempe.)
Take a bite
So the next time you’re at a friend’s house and see a flat-leaf cactus in their garden with colorful blobby fruits running along the edges, ask if you can try one.
Then go tell your mom you took a bite of a cactus.
