An outlandish delicacy and exotic is cactus jam, the recipe of which came to us from the countries of Central America. Locals prepare it from prickly pear (a genus of cacti that includes numerous subspecies).

Opuntia from the New World came to the Mediterranean countries, where it also gained deserved popularity. The edible part is red or yellow fruits, up to 10 centimeters in diameter. The flesh of the cactus has a sweet refreshing taste, reminiscent of watery strawberries or juicy pear. It contains proteins, sugar, vitamin C and starch. Prickly pear is used for various disorders of the gastrointestinal tract, ulcers and gastritis, diabetes mellitus, obesity, dehydration, inflammation, bleeding, as a general tonic.

A selection of the best recipes for cactus jam

Cactus fruits are consumed fresh, baked in the oven, added to salads and other dishes, make jam, jelly, compotes, tinctures. Young shoots are also edible. When collecting prickly pears, you should be extremely careful, they have special small spines (glochidia), in the form of hairs with hook-shaped outgrowths, which are very easily separated and remain in clothing and skin. Therefore, you need to collect and process cactus fruits with thick gloves.

Simple homemade cactus jam


Soak prickly pears in warm water for half an hour to get rid of the prickly hairs. Then gently peel, make an incision and remove the juicy sweet pulp. Cut it into small pieces and place in a saucepan. Add sugar, cinnamon and lemon juice.

All this mass must be cooked over very low heat until boiling, stir for about a quarter of an hour, remove from the stove and let cool and brew. If the fruit contains large seeds, the jam can be passed through a sieve.

Several types of cacti can be used for this treat, such as melocactus and echinocactus. In this case, not the fruits are used, but the whole plant as a whole. Such cactus jam is prepared as ordinary fruit jam, in several stages.

How to make cactus-based lemon juice


For jam, we need: oputsia fruits - 5 pcs, sugar - 2 cups, lemon juice - 2 tbsp. l, ground cinnamon - 0.5 tsp. Peel the spiny cactus. Cut the pulp into cubes, cover with sugar, shake well, so that everything is well mixed. The fruits instantly let the juice out, so you can cook them right away.

Put on low heat, add cinnamon, lemon juice and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes. The cactus jam is ready. It tastes slightly associated with strawberries or mulberries.

In order not to come across cactus seeds in conservation, at the end of the cooking process, filter it. An alternative solution is to use a juicer. At the same time, cooking almost does not change, only after removing the pulp is it passed through a juicer, and the jam is made from juice.

Jam with lime and prickly pear fruits


Ingredients:

  • 8 cacti;
  • 1 cup granulated sugar;
  • 1 lime.

Peel the oputia and cut into small circles, which will let the juice almost immediately. Therefore, put the cactus in a separate container and cover it with sugar. After that, the pulp will give the maximum amount of juice, which is very useful for us when cooking cactus jam and, in particular, at the stage of making syrup.

Now that the cacti are infused, immediately put the container with them on the stove, bring to a boil and simmer for several minutes over low heat. You will be surprised, but after that the mass will be ready! If you want to add a spicy sourness to the jam, add a little lime juice before the end of cooking. If the cacti do not boil well, they are prepared in several stages, heating and cooling the mixture.

Useful properties of cactus jam


It is quite natural that cactus jam cannot be prepared in the amount of 10-15 three-liter bottles. Think of this canning as a delicacy that you can enjoy yourself or serve on a festive table to surprise your guests. Just imagine how unusual such a treat will look like!

Few people know that plants for making jam can be grown at home! Such a plant is known as the prickly pear or the spreading cactus. It tastes like mulberry. Of course, now you can buy it in stores, so if you do not want to grow it, it is quite possible to look for a thorn for cooking on sale.

It is very easy to clean the fruits of a cactus - their peel resembles the skin of a tomato. By the way, be careful when you peel the cactus for making jam - you can get hurt on the thorns. In stores, thorny plants are sold already peeled, which greatly simplifies the task.

It is best to clean the stems of melocactus or echinocactus with a knife and fork. You can make a paper "clamp", which you can put on the plant, after which you can painlessly perform various manipulations with it. It is best to clean the prickly pear with gloves. If the prickly pear fruits are soaked in water for 20 minutes, the thorns will stop digging into the skin. If you add pectin to cactus-based jam, you get a wonderful jam.

Recipe video: Cactus jam

I, as some of you already know, live in Crete. Over the years, I have learned a lot from the Greeks in different aspects of life. But here's a lot of new things I learned about the culinary preferences and preferences of the Cretans.
Today I want to bring to your attention a recipe for a delicious cactus jam. I first tried this jam in one of the local restaurants and served it for dessert along with Greek yogurt. I received instructions from the owner of the restaurant on how to make this jam, and for almost the fifth year in the season I have been making it.
So let's get started. For those who have not seen what the fruits of a cactus look like, I show you in the photo below. cactus is also called prickly pear, perhaps this name is more familiar to you. There are many varieties of cacutus and not all of them produce edible fruits.

In Crete, they come in two varieties: with yellow and pinkish-purple fruits. I have cacti growing in my garden with pinkish fruits. Now is the time to collect cacti, today I have harvested and will make jam.

To do this, I need cactus fruits, gelatin, sugar, lemon, vanilla pod and a cinnamon stick.

IMPORTANT: cactus fruits are covered with very large and long thorns, which fall off by themselves when the fruit ripens, and small thorns, villi, which are difficult to see with the naked eye, but which, biting into the skin, will cause you a lot of unpleasant pain. In order to at least partially get rid of these small thorns, villi, it is necessary to lower the cactus fruits for at least half an hour in water. And, even after that, you should not take them with your hands. I used these tongs for this.

The edible part of the fruit is its pulp. which we will have to extract from it. To do this, lay out the cactus fruit on a cutting board, prick it with a fork to keep it stationary and operate with a knife.

Cut off the tails from each end of the fruit.

Now, using a knife, cut the peel of the fruit lengthwise.

Here is such a picture before us.

Using a teaspoon, take out the cactus pulp.

We carry out this procedure with each cactus fruit.

As a result, out of 500 grams of fruit, we only have 300 grams of pulp.
We spread the pulp of cacti in a container in which you usually cook jam, I have a non-stick cauldron.

Add jelly and sugar to the pulp.


We also send there a cinnamon stick and a vanilla pod, having previously cut it to length so that the vanilla grains are open.


We leave the pulp alone for half an hour, during which time the pulp will give a little juice. After that, we put the cauldron on the fire and let the jam boil, the sugar dissolves. If there is not enough liquid to completely cover the pulp, add 100 ml of water.
Cook the jam for 20 minutes, periodically removing the resulting foam. Five minutes before cooking, add a tablespoon of lemon juice and remove the cinnamon stick and vanilla.

As a result, we will get such a fragrant cactus jam!

If you ask me what cactus jam tastes like, then I will describe to you my taste sensations: something between strawberries and kiwi, just not as sweet as strawberries and not as sour as kiwi. This year, my cactus fruits have rather large seeds, so I passed most of the jam through a sieve, I got such a cactus jelly, which was urgently placed in a parcel and sent home to the children and granddaughter for the New Year holidays.

I love cactus jam for its flavor and for making up for my lack of strawberries in Crete. We eat it with yogurt, often make toasts with cactus jam for breakfast, and also sandwich cakes with it.

I don't know if you will be able to make this jam yourself, but perhaps you will find yourself in Greece and see cactus jam on sale. You can safely take a couple of jars of exotic and please your family! In Crete, they come in two varieties: with yellow and pinkish-purple fruits.

The taste of fresh fruits resembles mulberry, the seeds are similar to grape seeds. It does not make sense to buy kilograms if you are not going to start harvesting. In order to taste the taste, one fruit is enough.

Sabra was not bought by me, a whole package was already waiting for our arrival) Who is sabra ?, - you ask, - yes, this is the same prickly pear, the wide-eyed Opuntia cactus, but here she lives, thrives and bears fruit under this name: sabra, tsabar, sabres. In the English-speaking environment, the fruits are called prickly pears.

I remember in my youth I was fond of breeding cacti and my mother and grandmother brought me from the Crimea a prickly pear cake with a small green shoot on the top. The oputia grew and developed beautifully on my windowsill for some time, until one winter most of the cacti in my collection froze and in my hearts I handed the remains out of sight. Of course, I had a chance to dream of its flowering, but that it also bears fruit, and that these fruits are completely edible and even tasty, no one notified me, and my rich imagination did not wander into such a steppe then.

It would be nice to tinker with prickly pear fruits with the right tools. I remember in my youth it was recommended to simply roll a sheet of paper into a thick tape and clasp the cactus with it, like a clamp, if you are going to perform any manipulations with it, for example, a transplant. The habitual laziness forced me to give up on all sorts of precautions and I got down to business with my bare hands. As a result, we have)))))

The first few fruits I peeled like a potato, removing the tops and peeling off a thin layer of the skin with a knife. The rest were cleaned more economically - the peel was removed from ripe fruits approximately like from a tomato. I cut the pulp into slices, lightly covered it with sugar and jerked the pan so that each piece was thoroughly covered with it. The fruit immediately gave juice. The best approach to making something from prickly pears is to use a stone fruit juicer, i.e. one with which you prepare juices from tomatoes, currants or raspberries. I didn't have one at my disposal, so I had to tinker with an ordinary juicer and a sieve. As a result, out of about a dozen fruits, I got 300-400 grams of juice or syrup, I find it difficult to say what it is))))

I brought it to a boil and warmed it up over low heat for several minutes, that's all the labor costs. Now I pour this sauce over goat cheese and enjoy it under a glass of dry wine.) If you add pectin, then you get jam-confiture-jelly, etc. You can also just use it for lemonade compotes. Nice thing, no sourness, fragrant and beautiful color)



I am writing with one right, from the left for the fourth day I have been trying to get a thorn)))) And what do you think, cook jam from cacti and not earn a scab?)))) In fact, the prickly pear fruits are sold here already peeled from thorns, but sometimes all the same , the luckiest ...)))))

Composition of the recipe Lemons 1 pc. Cactus 8 pcs. Sugar 1 stack. Servings: 8 Method of cooking: how to cook Cactus jam. Imagine: New Year, guests at the table, you serve dessert, and, so casually, say: "But try the cactus jam, this year it turned out not bad, not like last." Guests are out, honor and praise you, and the eternal envy of your friends. Yes, of course you can buy anything in the store, but you need to bring anything else to mind. You can buy cactus jam, but you still need to be able to cook it yourself. In this culinary recipe, not even a recipe, but a delight, the most important thing is to find the right cacti. After all, you cannot cook this jam from ordinary cacti from the windowsill. For this purpose, the fruits of the common prickly pear are well suited, they also taste like strawberries, from which jam is cooked, and baked and eaten fresh. But there is another very interesting cactus, not even two - melocactus, it is also called a candy cactus, and echinocactus. Here they make jam from them, not from the fruits, but from themselves. So, the stems are very carefully, with the help of a knife and fork, cleaned of thorns and peels, covered with sugar and cooked over low heat until boiling. They are removed from the fire, wait until it cools completely, and again on the fire. Cool again, add lemon juice and boil again, filter in jars.

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There are many types of prickly pear fruits. I have a Libyan otsuntia (North Africa). The local population calls it "tin shawki". Cactus fruits should be picked and cleaned in seals, as they are armed with "glochidia" - specific spines in the form of very small, fragile hairs with tiny hook-like outgrowths at the ends. At the slightest touch of glochidia, their hooked hairs break off easily and instantly dig into the skin or clothing. In order not to suffer from small thorns, prickly pear fruits can be soaked in cold / warm water for 15-20 minutes. Then it will be possible to gently peel the fruit without gloves. We make an incision, Extract the juicy, sweet, bright pulp. Cut the pulp into cubes. Add lemon juice, cinnamon ... ... and sugar. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, for 10-15 minutes. I had cactus fruits with small seeds, so I did not take them out. If you have fruits with large seeds, you can strain through a sieve and make jelly. The result is a fragrant, very sweet jam! Note: I don’t know about seaming, I haven’t tried it. This recipe can be stored in the refrigerator for two to three months. Ingredients for "Prickly pear cactus jam": Cactus (fruit) - 5 pcs. Lemon juice - 2 tbsp. l. Sugar - 2 stack. Cinnamon (ground) - 0.5 tsp

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