I’ve been known to see something neat on the shelf at the grocery store, ‘ooh and aah’ over it for a while, buy it without really deciding what I’m going to use it for and then let it sit in my pantry for practically forever. Please tell me some of you do that, too! I think that being a vegan has opened my eyes to ingredients that I never knew existed, which really excites me, and I guess that’s why I make these not-so-common-ingredient impuse buys once in a while!
Recently, I got tired of this staring back at me every time I opened my cabinet:
What is it? Canned, marinated cactus. Or nopalitos, if you want to be fancy.
This can had been sitting in my cabinet for 6 months or more, gathering dust, until one day, a new follower to my Twitter account compelled me to do something with it.
This follower, RivenCactus, describes himself as “a grower of organic edible cactus.” I never knew such a thing existed, but I was ecstatic to discover him. I thanked him for following and immediately sent him a tweet, asking him what on earth I could do with a can of marinated cactus. He directed me to the recipes page on his website and suggested I try out the cactus chili. So, the next weekend, I cracked open that can of nopalitos and got my chili on!
RivenCactus’ recipe looked good, but I decided to just modify my standard chili recipe to include the cactus, since I think mine is pretty darn delicious! Here’s the recipe:
- 2 (15-oz.) cans kidney beans
- 1 (15-oz.) can diced tomatoes
- 1 (6-oz.) can tomato paste
- 1 cup marinated cactus, diced
- 1 small onion, chopped
- peppers of your liking, chopped (I used red, green and yellow bell peppers, a cubanelle and a jalapeno)
- 1 cup vegetable broth
- 1 tbsp. chili powder
- 1 tsp. cumin
- 1 tsp. garlic salt
- ¼ tsp. paprika
- salt and pepper, to taste
- 1 cup TVP, uncooked (optional)
- In a crock pot, combine all ingredients except for the TVP.
- Cook on low for 6 hours or on high for 4 hours, adding the uncooked TVP in during the last hour.
- Garnish with sour cream and cheese, if desired, and serve with corn bread.
While I was dicing up the cactus to add to my chili, I tasted a few pieces. Yuck! It tasted very sour and left a weird taste in my mouth. ‘Uh oh,’ I thought. ‘This could be bad.’ But, I decided to give it a shot anyway. I didn’t really want to waste the cactus and I was pretty sure that the flavor would be better once the cactus had a chance to mingle with the other ingredients in the chili.
Looks pretty good... tastes kinda funky!
The chili smelled wonderful as it simmered in the crock pot and a few hours later, it was time to taste. I scooped out a spoonful for myself, let it cool for a second and then let my taste buds get to work. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting it to be that good, based on what I had tasted earlier, but, after tasting my finished creation, I was pleasantly surprised! The cactus, while still a little tangy from the marinade, had taken on a more subtle flavor, sort of like that of a bell pepper, and had absorbed the other flavors in the chili nicely.
I ladled out some more of the chili into a bowl and topped it with some cheddar Daiya, a dollop of vegan sour cream and a few crumbles of corn bread I had made earlier, and feasted on my cooking-experiment-gone-great!
Success!
Do you like to experiment with “weird” ingredients or do you prefer to stick to the more familiar ones? What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever used in a dish?
Jena Mazzio has an affinity for anything animal-related, useless kitchen gadgets, the occasional good book and using writing as a creative outlet. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, two dogs and two cats (All rescues, of course. Well… not the husband, just the pets!) and blogs about her transition to veganism at Vegans Have Taste Buds, Too! and about her passion for animals at Paw in the Family.
