Cooking nopales is a great way to soften them and bring out some of the sweeter notes. It will also get rid of some of the slimy texture in the flesh. One common way to cook nopales is on the grill.

They should rinse nopales thoroughly to remove the slime from the surface before cooking them. They can then sauté diced nopal with olive oil, onions, garlic, jalapenos, and tomatoes to make a salad.

MELENDEZ: Nopales is this cacti plant that we have all across Mexico. ... you can boil them and - or cook them, and you can have them, like, completely raw. It's completely up to you.

In Mexico, nopales (prickly pear cacti) are mixed with tomatoes into a bright salad and spooned into tortillas with creamy goat cheese and two types of fresh salsa.

The foods and recipes from Latino kitchens are no different. ... take a lesson from Pati Jinich on the basics of cleaning and cooking nopales. O, P, Q. O is for olla.

MELENDEZ: Nopales is this cacti plant that we have all across Mexico. The landscape that we have, you probably have seen, like, far in the middle of nowhere, this enormous plant that is kind of round.