You can eat cactus? This Ripon business is bringing awareness to staple Mexican ingredient
What began as a "COVID baby," as Ripon resident Jillian Ruiz called it, is now a pickled cactus company that sells its products nationwide.
She and her husband, Eric Ruiz, founded Eric's Nopales in 2020 — two years after Jillian was introduced to nopales during a visit to Eric's mother in Riverbank.
The couple were living in Los Angeles at the time and when they went home, Jillian tried to re-create the meal, which included nopales, scrambled eggs, beans, queso fresco and tortillas.
She could find the cactus in a can, but not fresh — and she did not care for the canned version.
"I thought, 'Well, it's strange that nobody's doing flavored pickled nopales. I'm gonna do them,'" Jillian said.
What are nopales?
Pickled tender cactus and brine, Jillian said.
"They taste a lot like a pickled green bean, as far as texture," she said. "Then they are going to have the flavor profile of whatever kind of spices we add in there."
Eric's Nopales varieties include taco truck, chili ginger, Tuscan herb, garlic dill and heat wave.
Huevos con nopales is the classic way to eat them, Jillian said, but she also suggests tossing them in salads or veggie bowls, adding them to guacamole or salsa, and she's even used them in place of green beans in green bean casserole.
I eat Eric's Nopales straight out of the jar.
The couple are thoughtful about what they put in the brine, Jillian said, because there are a lot of ways to use it, too, including marinades, dressings and even cocktails like a dirty martini.
"None of us are new to tacos. None of us are new to guacamole. At this point, everyone's had quesabirria, which is a little bit more specific," Jillian said. "But it's amazing to me that there's so little awareness of nopales because they've been cultivated since Aztec and Maya as food, for their medicinal properties, for forage, for animals."
Nopales are low in calories and high in fiber, according to the Eric's Nopales website . They're used in treating obesity, gastrointestinal disorders, skin ailments and viral infections.
Nopales have anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, hypoglycemic, antimicrobial and neuroprotective properties, according to the site.
While Eric is more of a silent partner in the business, it is named after him. Eric is a first-generation Mexican-American.
It "made perfect sense" to Jillian to name the business after Eric because he has a foot in both cultures and she said she "feels like (their) product does, too."
"What's important to me about our business and our brand is that we're honoring a Mexican staple ingredient, but we're doing it in maybe more of an American-style pickle," Jillian said.
The couple moved to the Central Valley in 2021 — the same year they officially started distributing product.
Because pickled products are subject to state regulations, the couple work with a co-packer that makes the pickled nopales and jars them. The recipes are Jillian and Eric's own.
Jillian will put in an order and get the jars delivered to her home in Ripon. Then she ships them to her customers.
Eric's Nopales sells directly to customers at farmers markets and through its website . The nopales also are sold in grocery stores and shops, including O'Brien's Market on Dale Road in Modesto and the natural foods chain Central Market in Texas.
"I've shipped to Hawaii. I've shipped to Massachusetts. We've sold to Tucson Botanical Gardens and San Diego Botanical Gardens," Jillian said.
The pickled nopales are a shelf-stable product with no expiration date, just a best-buy date. That's the date by which everything in the jar is going to taste its best and freshest.
The best-buy date is 18 months from the date of manufacturing. Once opened, Eric's Nopales have to be refrigerated, but like any pickled product, they'll last in the fridge a fairly long time, Jillian said.
"My guess is that you're probably going to eat them faster than you would ever have to worry about that," she said.
