The Amazing, Delicious Tuna Fruit

Welcome to one of my favorite seasons in Mexico: Tuna Season.  And no, I am not talking about tuna-fish, I am talking about the fabulous Tuna Fruit, also called Prickly Pear.  In my mind, right now, it is just about the perfect food here in Mexico - delicious, cheap, nutritious, and available everywhere.  Really, what more could you ask for?

To make this amazing fruit even more special to me, it comes from the same plant as nopales (cactus pads), which I also adore eating.  (If you have not tried nopales, this is my favorite recipe.)

Before I get too carried away about the awesomeness of this fruit, let me show you a photo I took of the tunas still on the cactus.

A cactus full of fabulous tuna fruit

Beautiful "white" tunas for the beautiful price of $0.80 US for 6.6 lbs

The two colors available - purple and white

As we usually eat the "white tunas", the name for the tunas with a green peel, this day we decided to buy the rarer and more expensive purple ones.  Both types are delicious and sweet, with the white tunas having a more green, refreshing sweet flavor while the purple tunas have a flavor note reminiscent of beets.  

The flavor of tunas changes sharply according to their ripeness level.  If they are not quite ripe, they are slightly sweet with an acidic edge and, as they ripen, they get progressively sweeter until they remind me of candy.  For the most candy-like "white" tunas, purchase tunas with a yellow-green skin color. 

The texture of tunas is very similar to watermelon, with one important exception, tunas are full of small hard seeds.  As these seeds are too numerous to remove and too hard to chew, in order to eat the tunas, you need to carefully chew the fruit and then swallow all the seeds.  I know of no other fruit like them.

The most important thing to remember about preparing tunas is that they have very small, sharp thorns. I use a glove on the hand that I use to touch the skin on the tuna and an ungloved hand to pull the fruit apart from the peel.

Carefully cut off the two ends of the tuna

Stand the tuna up on one cut end and slice 1/4 in through the peel

Carefully pull the tuna apart from the peel

Lots of tuna peels

Delicious tuna fruit!

I hope that one day you have the chance to enjoy this amazing fruit!  The season here in Mexico in from June to October.   If you cannot find them in the States, feel free to visit me during the season.

Eat deliciously!
Kim