I recently had the dumb idea of trying to make
Prickly Pear Jam. If you live in the desert you can harvest prickly pears just about anywhere so I figured I'd try it. I found a site that showed you how to make jam, the only problem is that they have thorn, and lot of them. So after trying various ways to get the thorns off (we soaked them, and tried to burn them) we still had thorns in the meat of the fruit. So we changed out strategy and decided to do jelly. It was quite a learning process, and quite an undertaking. It took us two days to finish it all (with 3 of us working on it, I can't even fathom how long it would've taken just me to do it all). The catch is that it does take a sieve, and special cloth (either cheese cloth or muslin) to strain it through.
Anyway here is the process:
Pick the fruit. The best way we found was with tongs. You can wear leather gloves to protect your hands from the thorns, but don't try to attempt to pick the fruit with just the gloves, the thorns do go through the gloves. You want to pick the dark purple ones - the juicier the better, but want to pick some of the lighter fruit, about 20% of your total should be less ripe fruit.
Wash the fruit, we ended up soaking ours to see if the thorns would come off (which they don't) but a good soak (couple hours) helps clean them. Once cleaned, hold the fruit on a cutting board with tongs and cut in half. Place cut fruit (with seeds) in a large pot/kettle and fill ¾ full with fruit. Add water until the pot is a little more than half full. Bring to a boil (we had a lid on ours for a better steam and to save from splattering) and cook for 15-20 minutes after it comes to a steady boil. You may want to turn down the heat if it is bubbling over.
Once cooked run the fruit through a
heavy duty canning sieve to juice. We found that if you mashed it with a potato masher first it wasn't as hard for the person working the sieve to get them juiced good. Our juice ended up kind of thick, so don't dump the water you boiled the fruit in, out, you may need it to thin your pulp. Discard squeezed fruit and seeds.
Once you've mashed and strained all of your fruit you can use either
cheese cloth or
muslin cloth to further strain any remaining seeds or thorns out. We probably rushed this process, it would be best to strain over night. We ended up just straining ours twice. We used cheese cloth and used a rubber band to strap it around a large pot and then slowly dumped the juice in. Here is where we ended up using part of the water we had boiled the fruit in, our pulp was semi thick so we thinned with the juice water. Since the fruit had boiled in it, it was flavored like the fruit and didn't change our juice.
Once all of your juice has been run through the cloth of your choice, it's time to make jelly! We did 4 buckets of fruit so we cut, boiled and strained it all in one day and did the jelly on another day. If that happens to you, be sure to refrigerate the juice because it can spoil.
Prickly Pear Jelly
6 ½ cups of prickly pear juice
(if necessary, add up to a ½ cup of water to get exact amount of prepared juice needed. This is another place where the boiled juice water is good as long as your strain it)2/3 cup lemon juice
2 packages of Sure Jell
½ tsp. butter to reduce foaming - but this is optional
9 cups of sugar (Use exact amount of sugar. Reducing sugar or using sugar substitutes will cause it to not set up)
Put juice, lemon juice, Sure Jell and butter (if desired) in a large pot and bring to a hard boil. Once boiling add sugar all at once. Stir well, continuing to stir until it comes back to a boil. Once it returns to a boil (in which you can't stir down) cook for 3 minutes all the while stirring. Remove from heat, you can skim off any foam at this point. (we tried that, but didn't find it really necessary). You are now ready to fill jars.
Most people use a
water bath but my friend showed me that you can still can with out one. Clean the jars, seals and lids thoroughly. Put the lids and seals in a pan on the stove and bring to a boil, then simmer them until ready to use. Once the jars are clean, fill with about 2 inches of water and place in your microwave (You can also put them in a pot and boil them) and microwave them for 10-20 minutes until the jars are hot and the water inside has boiled. We pretty much just ran my microwave during the time it took to cook the jelly and then removed them when it was time to fill them. Once you have heated them long enough, dump the water out slowly in the sink while turning the jars to coat the entire edge of the jar with the hot water. Fill with jelly using a
canning funnel, wipe the edge of the jar to remove and jelly, get a seal and lid from your pan with tongs and screw on the jar tightly, but not forced. Turn upside down on a towel and allow to cool.
Once cooled you'll need to check the seal, just press the top of the jar, if it pops it's not sealed and will need to be refrigerated, if it stays down it's properly sealed and can be stored.
Store unopened jelly in a cool, dry, dark place for up to a year. Opened or unsealed jars need to be refrigerated and can be kept for up to 3 weeks.
*For some reason, your jelly may have batches that don't turn into jelly. Even using the exactly recipe, they may not. But don't fret, un-set jelly can be used as syrup!
**I meant to take pictures of our process, but was too involved that I forgot. So, sorry, no pictures. I do have the finished product, but do you really want to see a picture of a jar of jelly??
***We also found
this website that gave a whole bunch of other things that can be done with the fruit. Happy Cooking!
