Hambone's Mercantile

Prickly Pear Jelly is one of my absolutely favorite jellies (that, or American Beauty Berry Calicarpa americana, depending on the day). It has this really rich, sumptuous flavor, and hard-to-ignore vibrant color. The fragrance is sweet, green, maybe a little citrus, and earthy. Prickly pear fruits are also widely available this time of year in most parts of Texas.

When picking prickly pears, we grab buckets, long grill tongs, and snake boots. Select dark, purple hued fruits that come off the cactus paddles easily (with a little twist from your tongs). We gather them by the five gallon bucket, off of private lands. Landowners are usually pretty receptive to allowing collection if you speak with them and let them know what you would like to do (it doesn’t hurt to come back with a jar of prickly pear jelly as a thank you)!

The tunas (name given to the fruit of the prickly pear, I don’t know why) are pretty hardy and can sit for a day or two after collection, but we like to prepare everything as fresh as possible! So, once we get them home, we use a portable torch and some bamboo skewers to remove the spines. It’s a pretty simple (and kinda fun!) process. stick a tuna with the bamboo skewer, and rotate it in the heat of the flame. The skin will get shiny and the spines will glow red hot then burn out quickly. From there, we tip them right into the basket of the steam juicer, and start heating.

Here at Hambone’s Mercantile, we utilize information from resources that have put time, money, and data collection efforts into lab-testing recipes for home canning. There are many rebel canners out there that decry “my kitchen, my rules”, but microbes don’t care about your rules, and we have the technology and knowledge at our fingertips to make the safest product we can with the processes we have. So, when we make one of my favorite jellies, we use processes that have had their metal tested in a lab environment to minimize and eliminate possibilities of food-borne illnesses.

That said, Hambone’s Mercantile products are created in a home kitchen not inspected by the Department of State Health Services or a local health department. You will see this same statement on all of our food product labels, in compliance with Texas State Cottage Food Laws. If you do not see this or like statements on homemade food products, be suspicious of those foods.

We use a recipe that was lab tested by Bernalillo County Extension office out of New Mexico. You can see it here. Pomona’s Universal pectin offers a version of the recipe with their pectin here. Acid levels are the same, and sugar amount is lower, because Pomona’s utilizes a calcium water to help the jelly set, so is not as reliant on sugar. Pomona’s seems to be a bit difficult to locate in brick and mortar stores at times, so you can find it here. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. We are currently trying this recipe for texture, as Pomona’s pectin is no joke, and will give a very firm set!

Side note: though there is no lab tested recipe for prickly pear syrup as a canning recipe, it makes a killer margarita!

If you choose to use a steam juicer for your tunas, you greatly reduce your chances of over-cooking the juice. Finding that balance between extracting as much high quality juice as you can, and over-cooking your product can be challenging. Over-cooked juice looses it’s vibrant ruby-purple clarity, and begins to take on an orange-ish cloudy appearance (note-if you press the fruits in the steaming basket of a steam juicer, you may still end up with a cloudy product, but it will still have a vibrant ruby-purple color). Follow the setup instructions for your steam juicer, and as the fruits start heating and releasing their juices, periodically open the valve and drain the liquid (we use half gallon mason jars with a canning funnel). Doing so ensures the reservoir does not overfill, and the juice produced reaches a lower temperature quicker, helping to retain the color. Remember, if making jelly, the juice will have to be heated again. Less heat means more color! When the liquid coming from the steam juicer starts to become clear, and the tunas become more of a yellow-green with hints of pink, we stop collecting the juice.

Cutting the fruits in half will yield more juice than leaving them whole, but you will still get a significant yield leaving the fruits whole if you do not want to deal with trying not to get poked by really annoying little spines. Even with our best efforts to burn off all the spines before working with prickly pear fruits, we always miss some, and inevitably get poked by one or two. I feel the color is a bit richer and the yield is a bit better when cutting the fruits in half, so that is my typical process. I pick each fruit up by poking it with a fork, cutting it in half (still on the fork tines), and pushing it into the steamer basket with the blunt side of my knife.

The initial juice will have a deeper color than the juice towards the end of the steaming process, so once the juice has cooled, we consolidate it all into one large stock pot to ensure the resulting jellies are consistent in color, flavor, and quality.

One batch of jelly requires four cups of prickly pear juice, and results in about 5 half pints (approximately 240ml or 8oz) of jelly. The necessary bottled lemon (or lime) juice required for acidity helps give the jelly a bright ruby color. It’s really a lovely thing to see in the jars.

A few notes about jams and jellies, and Pomona’s low or no sugar added pectin. Traditionally, the combination of sugar, acid, and pectin interacting is where the jelly “set” develops. A specific ratio of sugar to pectin helps form the bonds to create the gel that gives jams and jellies that delightful jiggle. In order to vastly reduce the amount of sugar needed for a jam or jelly to set, Pomona’s employs calcium in the product. Because most people do not know the calcium content of their water or their fruits, Pomona’s provides a calcium mixture to add.

In traditional jams and jellies, that high sugar content also helps to act as a preservative, binding water molecules, thereby helping to prevent or prolong spoilage once the jam or jelly has been opened. Less sugar in a more modern recipe means that once opened, jams and jellies spoil faster. Pomona’s recommends any jam or jelly used with their low sugar recipes be consumed within three weeks (kept in the fridge). If your family doesn’t eat much jelly, using smaller jars is a better bet to help mitigate spoilage, though Pomona’s does state larger jars may be used. For more information, consult Pomona’s website!

And, as always, we do offer Wildcrafted Prickly Pear jelly for sale at Hambone’s Mercantile. We are located in Colleyville, Texas and can meet just about anywhere in the midcities area.