“Tequila’s best friend! Mezcal is pretty darn happy, too!”
Most of us know that prickly pear cactus yield sweet, delicious fruits that taste oddly tropical, despite their preference for a desert climate. A close cousin to the common prickly pear is the xoconostle. Its fruits looks similar to a prickly pear but their taste is muy sour and muy appealing. You find them in salsas and dishes throughout central Mexico. Xoxoc takes their xoconostle and dries them naturally and in this case, salts them. The result is an addictive chewy snack for hot weather, but where they really shine is with premium tequilas and mezcal.
The salt and sour sensation replaces the traditional salt and lime! Take a sip, take a bite and then you’ll understand why we declare these little flavor bombs essential to tequila time. And they’re a lot handier than messy limes and salt cellars.
If you have a tequila fanatic in your life, congratulations. You’re lucky. Now you have the perfect gift!
Xoxoc are of course our partners in the Rancho Gordo-Xoxoc Project. The origins of these snacks come from Xoxoc being located on land that had been destroyed by hundreds of years of cattle and the only survivors seem to be the natural xoconostle plants. Now they make these snacks, salsas and a wonderful marmalade, all with the sour prickly pears that thrive in the Hidalgo climate and terrain.
In the near future we’ll be adding the sweet version and the chile version to the website.
It’s hard not to like this intense, sour jam made from the prickly pear fruit known as “xoconostle”. All the sourness of a traditional marmalade but with no bitterness and just the right amount of sugar to balance the flavors.