Hello,
I'm sure this has been discussed before but I can't seem to find info. What is good conditions to dry cactus flesh?
Oven dry? Temp / time? Sun dry temp / time? Any advice? Thanks.

Im surprised no one answered this question. Ive always used my dehydrator set to the highest setting at 75deg C. I then use a food processor with a slicing blade to slice very thin stars of cactus, these dry overnight when laid on the trays. It is however very time-consuming to dry a lot of cactus and surely one could use the oven to bake the slices at higher temperatures. Did you try it out?

I was tripping my brains out on mushrooms when this was posted so I missed it

I also use a food dehydrator. My slicing method is to clip off spines with hand garden clippers, I then use a sharp non-serrated kitchen knife to slice a log in half the long way from the top of one rib to the top of an opposite rib. I then cut all ribs into slices to the center from the tops of the ribs, giving long strips of flesh that in cross-section is a big V with a smaller V indentation [it's important to aid drying]. I peel out the core and throw it away. I bunch some strips on their side and cut them into slices with a sharp kitchen knife, cutting through the skin on its side, no skin parallel to the cutting board. These wedges are loaded into the food dehydrator.

Perhaps I should get a food processor

I am wondering if someone here tried a citrus peeler knife to remove the spines and areole from the cactus. This exists also for oranges which is slightly bigger:

I've never dried cactus as I've always extracted or made tea with fresh, but



The best way I've found to de-spine a cactus is to use needle-nosed pliers, come at the areole from the side, clamp onto the base of the spine cluster and roll the pliers rather than plucking. It's easier, faster and less painful than plucking or cutting out the spines.

As far as removing the outer cuticle skin I have found that freeze/thaw x 3 or 4 really loosens it up from the green flesh and makes it easy to to scrape the green flesh from the outer shell with the flat edge of a knife. A couple of times I've been able to peel the outer shell skin when the cactus is fresh, after de-spining. I slice up the cactus into strips like Elrik described.

I've done this too, and I like it.
I use good garden clippers [and chemical splash goggles] simply because its so much faster. I can just clip-clip-clip up a rib. If you don't have good clippers or can't make a mess then, yes, needle-nosed pliers and a practiced roll are awesome.
Some are fanatical about removing the bases, sometimes even cutting out huge notches. I never saw a point to specifically removing the spine bases unless you're going to eat it like a cucumber. I've heard the myths about them containing 'poisons', strychnine, snake venom, or stuff that will make your trip bad but it's just that, myths.
I've survived gram quantities of mescaline made with spine bases

I've also removed the bases and blended raw cactus into a mountain of bitter fluff and ate it with a spoon.
Don't do that.

What’s the reasoning behind removing the spines and the waxy layer?

I’ve had cactus every which way and never bothered to remove anything. Either cook the whole lot core, spines and all or blend it all down with base

Thanks for the hint. Will try that one. Sounds great.

I agree it's not necessary to remove either the spines or the waxy outer skin to make tea as they'll blender and cook down just fine, it's more like a habit I got into when I first started making tea so as to work with only the darker green flesh. The only advantage I've found is that when I've left on the skin and spines the added material adds to the mucilage factor, which makes extracting a bit more difficult.

I wouldn't throw the central core nor the white tissue away since they contain significant amounts of alkaloids.

While proportionately the green flesh has more mescaline, the other parts still seem to contain significant amount, and are also heavier (therefore even smaller percentages add up to significant amounts when talking about more weight). By throwing them away you'll be possibly losing a good percentage of alkaloids (source)

The outer white flesh certainly has a worthwhile amount unless you're faced with an absurd overabundance of cactus. I always extract the white flesh outside the core.
I always taste the flesh inside the core [after rinsing a piece off and before tasting anything else]. To date I have not found a cactus in my collection in which the core flesh was bitter enough to warrant including it in the extraction. On a good specimen the green flesh is extremely bitter, the outer white flesh is quite bitter, and the core flesh varies from essentially no bitterness to the slight bitterness of boiled chips when I've decided they are too weak for one more boil.
I'm not exactly faced with a critical shortage of cactus, though. I forced myself to stick to pharmahuasca for years until my cactus collection was producing somewhat more mescaline than I can use. But I have always assumed adding the significant amount of mucilage from the core to add a trivial or scantly more than trivial amount of alkaloid would either decrease yield or necessitate extra pulls, extra lye, extra volume. If drinking tea it would just be more cactus snot.
That's the thing about cacti. Every step along the way you have to face whats practical versus whats theoretically possible.

Yeah it totally makes sense you want to reduce your work load and if you're not short on cactus, you should be fine indeed with just green and white flesh.

Though regarding the bitterness thing, I personally also thought it was a good indication but after this thread I now think this is quite unreliable way of measuring alkaloid content.

Thanks endlessness for making that clear! I really need to read the whole SC.

Thanks for sharing this Endlessness. This is important info to put out there. I cant tell you how many times over the last year I've heard people saying that only the green outer flesh should be used because the white flesh "doesnt have any mescaline and it just makes you sick". This has become a common claim all over the internet. And it is completely false.

Unfortunately, there still is so much misinformation and lack of understanding regarding these cacti being spread around. As popularity of San Pedro has exploded recently, so has the prevalance of the idea that "you're only supposed to use the green flesh". Seems like this myth is really taking hold.

Regarding removing spines, I just blast along each rib quickly a couple of times with a blow torch. This simultaneously loosens the skin, like blanching tomatoes

Thinking about it, it should be possible to flame-grill the cactus, then squeeze out the pulp like toothpaste.