Prickly Pear Jelly and Syrup

[Quackerbox]

MIL does the jelly but never heard of the syrup

[RifleBowPistol]

IMO one of the best tasting fruits. Sweet but not too sweet, tastes sort of similar to dewberries kinda.

Cut top off water bottle, place open end over the tuna, squeeze and twist. Suggest putting in hard bucket while picking. After I pick them I’ll put them in a feed sack or something similar, shake them around a bit to knock off a lot of the thorns. Dump out of sack and pick up with tongs, run each tuna through a flame to singe all the thorns off. To peel, cut the ends off, take paring knife or potato peeler and take a strip off one side the whole length of fruit. Then pull off the skin with fingers, I’ve found that to be much quicker than trying to slice the skin off all the way around.

Sounds like you got this deal down. Thanks. Also thanks for the description of the flavor. I know coyotes and black bears eat a lot of pears, you would think they would have a good flavor, the way those critters eat pears. I have never heard them called tuna before.

[brrdnk]

You can put a 5-6 of the pears in a colender and swirl around under running water and it will remove the quills.

[esoct25]

Syrup recipie please?

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[aadams34]

Looks great!

[Wile E.]

I did this too about a month ago, jelly is good, tastes sort of like a darker strawberry if you can imagine that. Tough to place the flavor really, but it’s good. Another thing is that you can make a bunch of juice, then save it in a jug and mix it into things like lemonade. I know there are prickly pear vodkas and stuff but I’ve never tried any.

[slayr]

Make jelly/jam and syrup every year at this time. I actually made 48oz of syrup this afternoon. Got stained fingers to prove it haha.

Is it the lighting or is your prickly pair a different color? It’s usually a deep red/purple when I do it and have seen others made.

The syrup is really dark, the jelly is a little bit lighter. I think the lighting makes them look a bit lighter overall.

[slayr]

Slayr, since you were named after me, I demand a ransom of 1 jar.

The fish are biting, and there's hogs to be kill-t. Gotta go!

Ha! Come and get some! It’ll take us forever to eat this amount.

[White Falcon]

I like to eat them off of the plant.

[slayr]

This is basically the same process / recipe I follow for the jelly.

https://youtu.be/MJN_Yy18F4o

[slayr]

I did this too about a month ago, jelly is good, tastes sort of like a darker strawberry if you can imagine that. Tough to place the flavor really, but it’s good. Another thing is that you can make a bunch of juice, then save it in a jug and mix it into things like lemonade. I know there are prickly pear vodkas and stuff but I’ve never tried any.

The wife is going to substitute this syrup for simple syrup in her margaritas...interest to see how that turns out.

[hog_down]

Can someone post up a recipe?

[SaltwaterSlick]

For those of you who have experience in making jelly, when do you cut the pears? What do you look for as far as ripeness? Are the pears firm, soft/mushy, what characteristics tell you that's a good one to pick?
Might be too late for me to try this year, but I'd like to be ready next year.
Thanks.

[slayr]

For those of you who have experience in making jelly, when do you cut the pears? What do you look for as far as ripeness? Are the pears firm, soft/mushy, what characteristics tell you that's a good one to pick?
Might be too late for me to try this year, but I'd like to be ready next year.
Thanks.

They’re ready about right now, even though there are quite a few that will be ready over next few weeks. I would think you could get them until close to October.

I am a novice, but you want to pick them when they are a deep ruby red. I didn’t pick due to firmness, solely off of color.

[slayr]

Can someone post up a recipe?

I posted this video....you can watch it and get exact process / recipe.

https://youtu.be/MJN_Yy18F4o