This is really an easy dish to prepare even though it seems complicated. It takes very little time and it’s almost impossible to get wrong.

Ideally, the best place to get nopalitos is from the cactus plant in your backyard. If you don’t have them growing in your backyard, you’ll have to buy them. If you’re not lucky enough to live near an HEB that carries fresh nopales (or even luckier and have them growing in your backyard!), (in the produce section; they come in a plastic bag), you will have to use canned (in a jar, usually) nopales. Goya is one of the companies that sells them in jars.

Most stores carry them. Buy the smaller size; the larger one is way too much. If all they have is the large jar, use only about half of the contents. In Houston you can find fresh nopales at the mercado on Airline Drive, so you might check your local outdoor or farmers market in your city or town.

Whether you are cooking fresh or canned, you should rinse them several times to get rid of some of the vava, the slime, that oozes out of them when you cut nopales. (You might also want to cut the individual pieces into smaller pieces. Not necessary, and yeah, it’s time-consuming, but I think they look better in smaller pieces.

Keep the rinsed nopales in the sink on a colander or sieve to allow them to drain well while you make the chile sauce.

Depending on how much you’re making, take two dried chiles anchos and two dried chiles guajillos (also known as chiles de cascabel) and place them on a heated comal or pan for a few minutes on both sides. Don’t leave them on the hot comal for too long. Remove the stem and, if you want, the seeds, and place them in hot water, enough to cover them. Let them soak for about 10 minutes. (Don’t worry: the sauce will not be too spicy. I’ve been making it for years and only rarely to I have to worry about the spiciness. If you prefer a spicier sauce, roast a couple of dried chiles de arbol, soak them in hot water and toss them into the blender with the others.)

While you’ve got a hot comal, place three of four garlic cloves on it, unpeeled, until they become a bit soft and squishy, turning them as they heat so all sides are heated. 

Once the chiles have soaked, place them in a blender along with the garlic cloves (peeled) and some salt, and about a cup to a cup and a half of the water in which you soaked the chiles. Puree the chiles until you get a nice smooth paste. If it’s too thick (if it sticks to the bottom of the blender when you tilt it), add more of the water and puree some more.

Set the chile mixture aside.

In a skillet, place about a couple of teaspoons of olive oil, and heat over medium heat. Add several slices of onion and sauté them until the onion is soft. Add the nopales and stir well as they cook. If you’re using fresh nopales, they will take longer to cook, but not that much. (Some people blanche the nopales before sautéing them, but it’s not necessary.) When their color loses its brightness, they are cooked. Add some cilantro and continue cooking and stirring. You can add some cumin powder and Mexican oregano, but you don’t need to. Not much, about a teaspoon of each, perhaps. Stir some more. Add salt.

When most of the water released by the cactus has evaporated, break an egg into the nopales and stir briskly until the egg is no longer runny and is spread evenly throughout the pan. It might take some time because there will still be some water from the nopales in the pan, which will make it difficult for the egg to solidify, but it’s important, because you don’t want a mushy (or moochi, as Patti Jinich says) mess when you add the chile sauce. (Note: the egg is optional; I lot of people make them without egg but I like them that way because that’s the way my mother used to make them.)

Before adding the sauce, set some nopales aside for those in your household who might be intimidated by the chile. 

Add the sauce. You may not need all the sauce but add enough so that you’ll have a nice gravy – un caldito! – when you finish cooking. Also, if you have any left over, the cactus tends to absorb the liquid and you end up with no calditowhen you reheat the dish.

That’s it!  Serve with beans and corn tortillas.