Desert Survival Food: Prickly Pear Cactus (Nopales) -Junkyard Fox

hello James from junkyard boxer back at you with another video and for this video we're going to go ahead and discuss the prickly pear cactus pad as a food source now in our previous videos we have discussed the cactus fruit that grow during the late summer months and those are very delicious where a couple of months away from them but there they'll be here soon and we've also discussed using a pad as a water container if you saw the battle horse knives woodsman Pro review I did for the outdoor arena we went ahead and used a large pad filled it up with water then used stone the stone boiling technique to make the water drinkable make it safe but for today we're going to go ahead and discuss the actual pad as a food source now as you can tell out here they are very common they are abundant in the American Southwest a lot of Native American tribes it was a staple dish for them Mexican cuisine same thing it's you know commonly eaten out here with your eggs or stir-fry in salads even in the Mediterranean and North Africa it's also a food source over there that's commonly eaten so um very common fruit common food to eat so let's go ahead and get started and just pick a couple of these out and then we're going to go ahead and cook them up now as with any food you want to go for the healthiest most appetizing looking one you want to steer clear the bottom ones as you can tell they turn brownish and they're just getting old they're going to be tough you really don't want to eat that it's not going to be enjoyable you want to go to the top ones that tend to be younger and of course they are covered with thorns and that is just a nuisance so you want to go with some that have the less thorns the less thorns the less work for you as well as less discomfort because you might be getting these on your fingers or you know you don't want to risk getting them in your mouth while you're eating them so go for less thorns I like this one right here if you notice it doesn't have any bug bites any discolorations at all there's a couple injuries here and there but we can we know when it comes to survival you can't really be picky this one looks the best so what I'm doing is I got some sticks here I don't want to touch them with my hand the less thorns you have in your fingers the happier you'll be so I'm just going to hold on to this as best as I can improvise chopsticks here then I'm going to cut down here and then we're going to take this we're going to take it to our fire and our camp and go ahead and process that ok so right now we're getting a fire nice and hot getting a good bed of embers now we don't have any thick logs in our area so we're just using some yucca stalks but they'll get the job done they'll get nice and hot so in the meantime while that gets hot let's start processing our cactus pads so here it is okay now as I said earlier the less thorns the less work you're going to have to deal with and last dangers you're going to have of it you know getting on your fingers or getting your mouth or your lips so this one's pretty good looks healthy small but enough meat on it so let's get to processing ok so let's get started so I'm gonna hold this down with my sticks and I'm going to use the 90 degree spine on my knife to start scraping off the large spines as well as the small glow kids which are those small hair like spines or stickers that are you know you don't really notice they're so small but they you will notice when they get on your fingers though they are a hassle they're pain in the butt so I'm trying to get rid of those and that's like as I said earlier that's where a 90 degree spine is really useful in the desert removing these thorns and then when I feel confident enough that I got most of them I'm gonna turn this pad around and take care of the other side and you can tell on my knife all those fibers you're not going to get all of them of course they're so small you're going to miss after that fireball syndrome off so I just want to get the majority of them off and don't worry about the edges these thorns over here that are right in the middle don't worry about that because we're going to cut that off so turn this around hold it down and once again start scraping off I'd say that's about most of it now for these outer edges that I still have the thorns that are just too much of a hassle for my knife to take care of I'm just going to cut that off tell this I'm not gonna bother with this on the edges so just for to discard that all this outer edge it's not worth my time but for the most part this looks taken care of so okay so I got most of the small thorns and spines Logans now for our friend fire I'm gonna just singe it off just place it close to the flames just to make sure all those small hairs all the glow kits are removed because we're eating this so obviously you don't want to miss one and then you eating it and you get it in your mouth your lips your throat so just make sure you miss it I'm sorry - you don't miss it Fortress of wood so the really fun it's kind of like a making s'mores but you know nots heap and I'm confident this singed off most of it most of the locust so now I'm gonna place it over my handy dandy grill I always carry on my haversack and I want to leave it for about seven minutes on each side so Stoke up those embers and really how you can tell is when you first gather the pads they're very stiff so you really want to just make them a little softer so once they start once it becomes very malleable that's when you'll know that it's cooked I'm not sure if you can hear it but you can hear the moisture from inside the cactus cooking boiling I guess that's normal now as I've said in previous videos when they come to catching small game or hunting and gathering you don't necessarily have to do what I'm doing you you know you I what I like to do is just you know survival sense so it could be you know I gather something and then I make a fire ten feet away you don't have to do that feel free to you know get some cactus pads and take them home use our modern amenities like an oven and you know look up recipes these things are delicious if you go ahead and mix them with some chili or some fajitas things like that stir-fry the way I'm doing it they may not taste that Pleasant it is a survival food of course but it will be far more palatable if you actually take them home and take your time with it so you don't have to do this I'm not a big I'm not the biggest fan of eating prickly pear pad but like I said it could be more delicious if you take them home and make them right but for now we're just doing it a very primitive okay let's turn it over okay and let this side cook for about seven to ten minutes okay so it's about cooked well done okay now let's go ahead and slice this into some strips so as I said earlier you can take them home and make some prickly pear fries make some one chili put up in your omelet all kinds of stuff but as a you know if you're trying to live you know if you're in a survival situation or trying to live off grid this will do just fine see and you can tell that they're nice and soft and they're really hot right now so want to let them cool off before I burn my mouth and in the meantime what we can do is put some cayenne on them as I've said earlier I learned the hard way that spices make everything a little better because I'll be honest I'm not the biggest fan of prickly pear pads I really am NOT but food is food especially if you're trying to survive one should not complain so we're just going to let these cool off but uh not too shabby we've got ourselves some lunch so they've cool down enough as you can tell nice and soft got some cayenne and salt on them this one's kind of tasteless not too bad they normally taste like roasted pickles to me as I said I'm not the biggest fan of them but food is food and the great thing about prickly pear is if you're out here trying to hunt set some traps or you need to bring your firearm trying to take down a rabbit whatever the case may be you know that's really a gamble you can try to hunt and you can come home empty-handed while a prickly pear you're always going to find it there now you find yourself a good pad and you got yourself some food it's not going to run away so it's always a staple food and if you are trying to live off-grid trying to live the hunter-gatherer lifestyle whatever the case may be this is going to definitely be a friend like I said the pads or food during late summer the fruits that they grow the cactus fruits are food and they make excellent containers for stone boiling some water a little bit of extra salt definitely doesn't hurt oh yeah much better well guys cactus is a great source of vitamin A fiber vitamin C and antioxidants so it's definitely a friend to have if you're trying to survive out here in the American Southwest plentiful there's many recipes to make this a far more palatable food because of what I am doing it's not that tasty so if you are eating out here one bring sure to bring make sure to bring water so you don't dehydrate and to bring it because this isn't the best tasting food so Cheers in the meantime guys this is about the conclusion of this video so if you like it go ahead and give me a thumbs up subscribe to my channel if you haven't yet I'm going to enjoy the last of my lunch then head off home so we'll see you guys next week with another video I'll go outside and get your boots [Music]

Channel: Junkyard Fox

Views: 4,014,930

Keywords: Bushcraft, Survival, Self, Reliance, James, Harris, cactus, nopales, nopalitos, survival food, hunting and gathering, opuntia, el paso, texas, new mexico, james harris, junkyard fox, wild edibles, cuervo negro, camel eating cactus, cameleatingcactus, cactus eating

Id: xfQ2vhA97A0

Length: 11min 36sec (696 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 26 2016