A friend has complained of the taste of his cactus drink. The following recipe can be used to prepare a palatable drink made from any of several different species of consumable columnar cacti. It involves the wet method, i.e. uses fresh material, not dried.

1. WEARING LEATHER GLOVES to avoid getting thorns in you, first take a few cuttings which you will propagate (so you will have more fresh material in the future). Propagating cactus from cutting is extremely easy, but I won’t describe how to do so in this post.
2. WEARING GLOVES slice the cactus as you would to make 1/2 inch thick bologna slices. The slices will look like stars.
3. WEARING GLOVES, Trim off all the thorns and discard them. A kitchen peeler, or a paring knife, can be used to remove the spines and ‘eyes’. You now can put the gloves away.
4. This step is OPTIONAL but recommended. Put the slices into a freezer bag. Freeze the slices overnight or longer, and thaw before use. The slices can be kept frozen a long time if you wish.
5. Peel off the very thin plastic-like cuticle, and discard it. The cuticle is the paper thin parchment-like skin of the cactus. Freezing and then thawing the plant material first makes separating the cuticle from the underlying tissue MUCH easier, but cuticle removal can be done without first freezing the plant, although it will be very time consuming to do. Do NOT discard anything which lies just beneath the cuticle.
6. Cut out the woody core and (optionally) save it for a separate boiled extraction.
7. Place all the saved material (other than the woody core) into an electric blender along with a lot of water, a little lemon juice and some sugar.
8. Whiz up until liquified.

The result is a palatable but thick and rather viscous, foamy lemonade. Consider it a lemon cactus smoothy. You can chill it in the fridge if you wish, but you will need to shake it up again before consuming because you want the foam to be blended into the drink, not be a distinct layer, so drink it quickly before it separates.

The drink does not taste bad, it tastes like lemonade, although it will be somewhat bitter. The trick to making it palatable is using enough water and sugar in the preparation that you can drink it down without excessive bitterness. Don’t overdo the lemon, it should not be too sour to drink.

© 2007 Walt