How to Eat Cactus Fruit Prickly Pear Taste Test

you hello and welcome am your host Matt Taylor today I'm going to show you how to eat cactus fruit or prickly pear cactus pear they go by variety of different names also I'm going to do taste test first of all cactus fruit or prickly pear grows natively in hot arid climates for example here in Arizona they grow really well in Mexico they grow really well and they are used in variety of dishes in jams and jellies used in smoothies just lot of different things that you can use it for or you can just eat them as is as well so I'm just gonna show you how to cut into one and how to eat it and tell you what the tastes like let's get started alright here is cactus fruit they come in two basic colors dark purple like this and green color and just want to point out some health benefits first they're full enough full of antioxidants they support liver health they help to fight inflammation they're high in vitamin and other things like calcium magnesium potassium they're very low in calories one of these fruits is only about 40 calories which is pretty awesome and they are low in carbs and high in fiber so just very nutritious fruit and if you were going to collect these in the wild they'd have lot of little tiny thorns on them here and so you would have to take all of those off otherwise they would not be very pleasant they would stick into you so when you buy them at the store just picked this up at the store today at my little Ranch Market and they come with everything already taken off for you alright so how do we cut into it and eat it well what you'll do is you'll take your knife and come on this end cut off this in look how that color in there nice will cut this other enough like that and then what we want to do is going to come down and get to cut the top put little cut in there that cuts through the skin and then we can just peel back the skin and it'll come right off the fruit super duper easy comes right off and you're left with the fruit now if you're going to put this in smoothie you can just drop this in the smoothie and grind it up you can eat it as is they do have some seeds in there see these little seeds so you can pulverize them up and then strain out the seeds if you wanted to and then you can just or grab them like this and just go ahead and eat it seeds are edible they're just pretty crunchy very tasty there you have it that is how you cut open and prepare cactus fruit to eat and you can also put it in jams and jellies you can juice it variety of dishes that you can make with it so what does it taste like I'm gonna dive right in so it has those hard seeds in there you can just keep them in your mouth and then spit them out it's very mild sweet flavor and the texture is very soft almost like Kiwi if you're familiar with the texture of Kiwi does not taste like Kiwi but the texture it's like Kiwi but it's very good like said mildly sweet probably why the calories are so low in this so next time you see cactus fruit at your store pick one up and give it taste here in Arizona they're really cheap or you can get them out me out in the wild for free if you want they just take some time to prepare them to get those thorns off of them I'm Matt Taylor this has been another episode of in the kitchen with Matt thank you for joining me as always if you have any questions comments or requests put them down below and will get back to you as soon as can thumbs up down the corner push it don't forget to subscribe to my channel and check out my other videos take care time for me to dive into another piece yeah