Stage 2- Extracting the Juice
After experimenting with many techniques for extracting the juice we found that the best techniques are:
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| soaking the cactus |
1. SOAKING: cutting the cactus pad in half, then into smaller pieces, then soaking the pieces in water for a week
-with this method the juice is more liquid-like than method # 2
-this method has a longer preparation time, but if planned in advance, it takes less labor than method #2
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| grating the cactus |
2.GRATING: cutting the cactus pad in half, then into smaller pieces, then grating the pieces with a cheese grater
-with this method the juice has chunks of the cactus (could add fiber if used in plaster?)
-this method requires an extra step of grating, but the juice is ready to use right after it is grated
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| grated juice |
Other methods we tried that didn’t work:
- hitting the cactus with a hammer
- Smashed boiled and fresh prickly pear- boiled leaves seemed dried out and didn’t produce hardly any juice.
- compressing the cactus with a hydraulic jack
- grating against wire mesh
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| compressing with the hydraulic jack |
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| using wire mesh as a grater |
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