Recipe Preserving Olives (2)

Recipe Preserving Olives (2) (many thanks to Laura, who shared this recipe)

Here is another recipe for preserving olives. Laura was inspired by her large olive harvest in 2019 and Val's recipe to start experimenting until she found a variation of Val's that worked really well for her. Here is her super simple method that yields an olive that is so tasty, a local Italian friend reckons it reminds him of being home in Italy!

Ingredients: fresh olives, water, salt (not iodised), vinegar, herbs, olive oil

Method:

Phase 1: Prep
1) Collect your olives as they ripen. You can pick them from the tree or off the ground. Rinse them in fresh water. If you don’t have enough for a full batch you can store them for a few days in the fridge until you collect your batch size.

2) Score the olives by running a knife from top to bottom to the depth of the stone.


3) Put olives in a non-metallic container and top with fresh water (tap water is fine – I’m on town water and didn’t boil it or leave it out). Cover with a loose lid or cloth but do not seal.

Phase 2: Removing bitterness from olives

4) Every day for at least 2 weeks, possibly up to 6 weeks (mine took over 4 weeks), drain all the water and refill container with fresh water. Taste the olives to determine when the bitterness is gone. This will be a matter of personal preference.

5) (optional – for the batches where I did this, the skin seemed less tough but the flavour was the same) Make a batch of 10% brine by heating water (don’t boil away or your brine gets stronger) and adding 10% salt by weight (100 grams of salt for every litre of water) until salt dissolves. Let the brine cool and, after dumping the fresh water from olives, top up the container with brine. Leave in the unsealed container for 1-2 weeks (again, go by taste).

Phase 3: Curing and storing olives

6) Make a new batch of 10% brine (as above under point 5). For every 1 litre of brine, mix in ½ cup of vinegar (I use apple cider vinegar). Cool your brine, then drain and rinse your olives.

7) Add your favourite herbs interspersed in your olives and cover with brine mixture. I found I always want to add garlic and dill to my olives. In addition, 1 or 2 other herbs is plenty. I didn’t find any I didn’t like. I tried fennel, basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, coriander and bay leaf but I’ve read sage is also good and I’m sure there are plenty more.

8) Cover olives, herbs and brine with a float of olive oil. Make sure everything is under the oil. Any herb or olive that sticks out will go mouldy. In my experience you want the herbs under the olives as they tend to float to the surface over time. Seal the jar with an airtight lid and store in a cool dark place (like your pantry – no need to refrigerate).

9) Enjoy your olives. I tried them 24 hours later and they were nice. In about a week they were good. In 2 weeks they were great. In a month they were still great. I expect them to remain great until they are gone, hopefully the day before next year’s olives are ready to process.

A note on handling:

When stored the olives will keep well. Once you open them and start fishing out olives, there is a risk of contamination. I find storing in large jars is easiest for me then I scoop from the large jar into a smaller jar for daily use. The storage jar will need more olive oil floated on its surface before going back into store.