I have always found it preferable to work with fresh cactus, it is always available fresh and i just dont see the benefit of drying it prior to extraction.
Working with the fresh cactus can be tedious and a few little tips can make things so much quicker and easier.
After working with many many many meters of cactus, injuring many thumbs(by getting the skin of the cactus under the nail - usually the thumb nail) the easiest and safest(finger wize) way i have found is as follows.
Requirements
First the spines need to be removed, a usefull little tool iv found for this is a little item by victorynox knives.
This makes the job much faster but is by no means neccicary.
The way i found it quickest to proceed is to first make an incision on the one side of each areole
Working your way down each rib, rib after rib, until the entire cactus is done - half way.
Once that is complete the spines can be removed by rotating the peice and repeating the proceedure on the uncut side of each areole
Within 7 minutes(incl taking photos) the peice was clear of spines
A little knife can be used and is just as accurate but more time consuming
knife used on left areole - victorynox tool used on the right one
Once the cactus is free of spines its time to strip it into snakes
Take the cactus and cut along each valley between each rib - making sure to cut on the v
If the core is soft - cut to the center, if not cut to the core(the peice in the tek was softish but was still cut to the wood for purposes of demonstration)
Once the log has been sliced down the ribs, run your thumb down between the ribs to split the sections somewhat - this makes the next step easier.
Using your thumbs, carefully separate the cactus from the wood
Work the snakes off the core keeping them in one peice - if they start to split up a bit - use a knife to get them back on track with being removed in one peice.
This should leave u with some cactus snakes and a core
If the core was soft and one cut the middle - they can easily be sliced off with a knife.
Any little bits of core left clinging to the snakes can be removed too.
The snakes should now be cut to a size that is easy to work with.
using ones nail the skin should be worked off each peice starting on one side - moving slowly from left to right, little by little
This is after moving across once
this is after going across twice
after repeating this on the other side the skin comes off in one peice
This process is rather quick and took only 22 minutes
Optionally one can now fillet the cactus to separate the dark green flesh from the inner white flesh
To separate the 2 parts the best way i have found is to cut each snake down its back lengthwize
then lay each peice down so it can be filleted
if done carefully the separation can be quite accurate
i dont usually bother with this as the white flesh contains plenty of actives
what i found best to do is to slice it up like a carrot
then do 2 tea pulls with minimal straining, freeze/thaw then blend for the final 2 tea pulls
Just out of interest the original peice before being prepped weighed - 1888g
After being prepped - 1422g
The cactus in the pic is an almost spineless pedro - it cant hurt u - u can toss it to a friend and they can catch it any way they want without chance of injury.
No thumbs were hurt in the making of this post.
Hope this tek helps someone out.
Working with the fresh cactus can be tedious and a few little tips can make things so much quicker and easier.
After working with many many many meters of cactus, injuring many thumbs(by getting the skin of the cactus under the nail - usually the thumb nail) the easiest and safest(finger wize) way i have found is as follows.
Requirements
First the spines need to be removed, a usefull little tool iv found for this is a little item by victorynox knives.
This makes the job much faster but is by no means neccicary.
The way i found it quickest to proceed is to first make an incision on the one side of each areole
Working your way down each rib, rib after rib, until the entire cactus is done - half way.
Once that is complete the spines can be removed by rotating the peice and repeating the proceedure on the uncut side of each areole
Within 7 minutes(incl taking photos) the peice was clear of spines
A little knife can be used and is just as accurate but more time consuming
knife used on left areole - victorynox tool used on the right one
Once the cactus is free of spines its time to strip it into snakes
Take the cactus and cut along each valley between each rib - making sure to cut on the v
If the core is soft - cut to the center, if not cut to the core(the peice in the tek was softish but was still cut to the wood for purposes of demonstration)
Once the log has been sliced down the ribs, run your thumb down between the ribs to split the sections somewhat - this makes the next step easier.
Using your thumbs, carefully separate the cactus from the wood
Work the snakes off the core keeping them in one peice - if they start to split up a bit - use a knife to get them back on track with being removed in one peice.
This should leave u with some cactus snakes and a core
If the core was soft and one cut the middle - they can easily be sliced off with a knife.
Any little bits of core left clinging to the snakes can be removed too.
The snakes should now be cut to a size that is easy to work with.
using ones nail the skin should be worked off each peice starting on one side - moving slowly from left to right, little by little
This is after moving across once
this is after going across twice
after repeating this on the other side the skin comes off in one peice
This process is rather quick and took only 22 minutes
Optionally one can now fillet the cactus to separate the dark green flesh from the inner white flesh
To separate the 2 parts the best way i have found is to cut each snake down its back lengthwize
then lay each peice down so it can be filleted
if done carefully the separation can be quite accurate
i dont usually bother with this as the white flesh contains plenty of actives
what i found best to do is to slice it up like a carrot
then do 2 tea pulls with minimal straining, freeze/thaw then blend for the final 2 tea pulls
Just out of interest the original peice before being prepped weighed - 1888g
After being prepped - 1422g
The cactus in the pic is an almost spineless pedro - it cant hurt u - u can toss it to a friend and they can catch it any way they want without chance of injury.
No thumbs were hurt in the making of this post.
Hope this tek helps someone out.
