Cherry Chipotle Nopales Salsa Recipe and the Health Benefits of Prickly Pear
Written and Photographed by Juliet Blankespoor
Cherry Chipotle Nopales Salsa.
Cherry Chipotle Nopales Salsa ingredients.
Cherry Chipotle Nopales Salsa Recipe
Equipment
- Medium pot
Ingredients
- 2 medium tomatoes
- 2 medium-sized nopales cactus pads*
- ½ sweet onion
- 1 cup black cherries
- ⅛ teaspoon sea salt
- ⅛ teaspoon chipotle powder
- 2 limes
- ¼ cup minced cilantro to taste
- 1 handful of edible flowers - Calendula, scarlet runner beans, and a touch of red clover are the flowers in the pictured salsa. Also consider the flowers of bee balm, chives, rose of sharon, squash, or daylily (consume in moderation if you are eating daylily for the first time, as a small percentage of the population is allergic)
Directions
- Dice the nopales into ½ inch cubes, bring three cups of water to a boil, boil the diced pads for two minutes, strain and put aside to cool.
- Pit the cherries. Dice the tomatoes, onions, cherries, and cilantro. Place in the serving bowl.
- Add the salt, chipotle powder, and the juice of one and half lemons. Slice the remaining half lemon into garnish wedges. Mix.
- Add the edible flowers. Consider pulling the petals away from the functioning parts. For example, pull the calendula “petals” off of the whole flower (the green parts are tough and taste medicinal).
- Garnish with lime wedges, coarse sea salt, and whole edible flowers.
Notes
A young nopale with tender green “spines”.
Opuntia humifusa flowers.
Red clover and scarlet runner bean flowers.
Cherry Chipotle Nopales Salsa with calendula.
The health benefits of prickly pear
Nopales (Opuntia spp., Cactaceae) are an important medicine and traditional food in Central America and the Southwest. The pads are eaten as food, dried and ingested as capsules, or made into a medicinal slurry beverage. The fruit is eaten fresh (after the glochids and spines are removed), juiced, and prepared as wine and jam. The pads are high in soluble fiber, which helps in the removal of excess cholesterol from the body; it is thus beneficial in prevention of cardiovascular disease. Soluble fiber is water soluble, or hydroscopic; it swells and takes on a slimy texture in the presence of water. Oats, okra, barley, chia, flax seed, and split peas are all high in soluble fiber; they all have a slimy or mucilaginous texture.
The liver packages up excess cholesterol in bile salts (a component of bile), which is excreted into the small intestines via the gall bladder. If soluble fiber is present in the diet, cholesterol binds to the fiber and is escorted out of the body in bowel movements. If there is little to no fiber in the body, the cholesterol can be reabsorbed further downstream, thus increasing the body’s net supply of cholesterol.
Soluble fiber is also a prebiotic, which means intestinal flora can feed off it; eating foods high in soluble fiber is one of the ways we can nourish healthy populations of beneficial bacteria. Another additional benefit of fiber is increasing satiety without adding calories. This is obviously beneficial only in people with easy access to abundant food.
Spineless Nopales growing in a terra cotta pot
Prickly pear is one of the most popular herbs for treating NIDDM (non-insulin- dependent diabetes mellitus) in Mexico. It has demonstrated hypoglycemic effects, possibly through increasing insulin sensitivity at the level of cellular membranes. It appears to be more active in moderating blood sugar levels as food, rather than the powdered form (capsules). The daily dosage is four fluid ounces of a slurry made from the pad blended with water, taken in divided dosages. One to two small pads, ingested as food, is a more pleasant delivery of prickly pears medicine, in my humble estimation. Downing slimy goo as a beverage conjures up images of slurping frog eggs, but it may be fine for you (especially if you are a raw oyster imbiber). The tangy mucilaginous pads can be eaten with scrambled eggs, prepared into salsas, cooked into soups, or eaten as a pickled condiment. Caution should be used in combining prickly pear with pharmaceutical hypoglycemic agents, as the prickly pear may dangerously compound the hypoglycemic affect. The dosage of the pharmaceutical may need to be lowered with concurrent use of prickly pear.
Topically, the pulp of the prickly pear is anti-inflammatory and used to reduce the swelling of burns, rashes, arthritis, sprains, and other injuries. The fruit of prickly pear, called tunas, are also edible and are very high in anthocyanins, which is a type of anti-oxidant bioflavanoid. The juice is quite tasty, and in my experience, feels very potent nutritionally. A daily dose of the juice is two to four ounces diluted in water or other milder juices.
Meet The Green Mastermind Behind Blog Castanea:
JULIET BLANKESPOOR is the founder, primary instructor, and Creative Director of the Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine, an online school serving thousands of students from around the globe. She's a professional plant-human matchmaker and bonafide plant geek, with a degree in botany and over 30 years of experience teaching and writing about herbalism, medicine making, and organic herb cultivation. Juliet’s lifelong captivation with medicinal weeds and herb gardening has birthed many botanical enterprises over the decades, including an herbal nursery and a farm-to-apothecary herbal products business.
These days, she channels her botanical obsession through her writing and photography in her online programs, on her personal blog Castanea, and in her new book, The Healing Garden: Cultivating and Handcrafting Herbal Remedies. Juliet and her family reside in a home overrun with houseplants and books in Asheville, North Carolina.
Interested in becoming a contributor?
© Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine and chestnutherbs.com, 2011-2024. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine and chestnutherbs.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Learn more about cultivation, identification, and uses for medicinal herbs in our 1,000-hour Herbal Immersion Program, which is the most comprehensive handcrafted online herbal course out there.
–
–
Pursue Your Dreams!
Get 100 pages of herbal resources with our Budding Herbalist Guide!
Linda Young says:
I made the salsa and it is delicious. Thanks for sharing!!!
Christine Borosh says:
So glad you enjoyed it!
renae randall says:
are all cacti edible? i am not sure whats growing in my yard. it has beautiful yellow flowers. btw, how easy is it to transplant a new small piece that is growing off an older one?
Juliet Blankespoor says:
Not all cacti are edible, so you’ll definitely want a good field guide so that you can positively identify it, and then research any edible and medicinal uses. That’s an important rule of thumb before eating any new plant!
It’s extremely easy to propagate prickly pear! It’s essentially as easy as cutting off a pad and storing it in a dry, dark place until you’re ready to put it in soil.
Ellen Lattz says:
This is a lovely blog. I’m so glad I came across it. Thanks for publishing all this wonderful information.
Juliet Blankespoor says:
Thank you! Glad you’re enjoying it!
Juliet
Lisa Harris says:
Great post – I am very interested in food, energy, and healing and look forward to reading more of your blog!
I found you through a friend who taught a class in Vermont called Wisdom of the Herbs.
Be well
Lisa
Mollie Curry says:
Too much of the tunas juice had a nauseating effect on my husband, Steve. I really appreciated your note on dosage there! Beautiful photos, BTW.
Juliet Blankespoor says:
Mollie,
how much did he eat? People who have eaten too many pads (maybe in famine) have gotten really sick.
Mollie Curry says:
He juiced a bunch of fruit then drank maybe 6-8 oz.
Maybe he didn’t even get that down before he started feeling a bit yucky.
Thea Summer Deer, Ph.D. says:
This is beautiful! I used to live in the desert Southwest and enjoyed the prickly pears (and got stuck my fair share!) among other desert notables. Your presentation, information and inspiration are much appreciated.
Juliet Blankespoor says:
Thank you Thea for visiting, and for the kind words!