I couldn’t help but eat these plain first before doing anything with them. I was too intrigued by them to really look too much into doing anything else. It did take me quite a bit to really figure out how to go about accessing the actual fruit on the inside. These look like plump little bites but the skin is pretty tough.
To get to the middle you chop the ends off (which I obviously skipped) and cut a line down the middle and the skin just peels off. Easy as that, the skin just separates itself from the flesh, you don’t have to discern between it and tasty bits.
Now, in the research I’ve heard of people just chopping them up with the skin still on since there are apparently tiny edible seeds in there that you can easily chew on.
Now, let me show you a picture of what the inside of these babies look like.
See those dark spots? Those are seeds. Seeds I had come to believe were not difficult to eat much like a pomegranate. I took a pretty sizable bite and came to realize that no, you are to never eat the seeds. Eat the seeds as often as you eat rocks. Eat the seeds if you love seeing your dentist.
See, there are some small seeds and nuts I just skip peeling and eat whole. The shells of pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds don’t bother me, I’ve chewed up watermelon seeds before (I didn’t grow one in my stomach much to my relief), and pomegranates never gave me trouble. Cactus pear seeds will destroy your mouth. I may also be focused on this because I just got four fillings before typing this up.
The taste though? If water could go stale and you poured it into a mildewed cup is how I would describe the flavor of a raw prickly pear. It actually reminded me a ton of dragon fruit’s flavor. Where there wasn’t actually a strong flavor there, but what was there wasn’t too pleasant. The taste isn’t as bad as dragon fruit’s though because I actually had a bite or two before realizing this wasn’t for my taste buds.
I guess we’ll just have to doctor these up this week.
Try 52 