How to Cure Green Olives
Oct 11th, 2009 | By Hank | Category: Foraging, Greek | Comments | 50 Comments |
Year after year in my new home here in Northern California, I feel myself sinking down roots and developing new traditions. One of them is curing my own olives, which begins for me in early October.
On some crisp autumn day, I will head out into one of the many public parks near my home that someone wisely planted with olive trees a generation ago. Sometimes I go solo, sometimes with friends. When I return, college football is in full swing, and I watch the games as I sort through my haul and prepare the brine.
And after that first season, I’ve eaten a handful or two of last year’s olives as a snack while the work is progressing. It’s a quiet little tradition, but it’s grown on me: Cool sunny October days mean gathering green olives and watching a Big 10 football game (I am a Wisconsin graduate).
This weekend I went out with Elise from Simply Recipes to a public grove I knew would be loaded: Olives are alternate-bearing crops, with one year’s crop thin, the other flush. This should have been a flush year for a Mission olive tree in the park, but it was either picked clean or failed to set this year. No matter, there were 30 other olive trees to choose from.
Most were rotten with olive fly, whose larvae burrow into olives and leave a beige scar where they entered. Tiny dots on an olive are OK, but that telltale scar means there is a visitor lurking within your olive.
Another hazard are the dry olives. Trees forced to live by their own wits — away from regularly watered grass — are stressed, and their olives shrivel early. Shriveled olives are usable, but they bruise rapidly and don’t make a clean green olive.
Elise and I still found several pounds of good green olives. Back at home, we set to separating them. My Badgers were getting their asses handed to them by Ohio State, so I kept my focus on the olives.
We separated them into small, medium and large olives — we have no idea what variety they are, as I don’t know how to tell the difference. We didn’t have enough large to make its own batch, so I mixed them with the mediums. I now had a choice of cures: water or brine. (You can also cure olives with lye, but I’ve not yet done that.)
Since we plan on going out again for both green and black olives (that will be in December sometime), I decided on giving the water cure another go with the large olives; I’ve had mixed success with this in the past. The water cure is a Greek method in which you open up the olive somehow and then soak it in cool water for up to 14 days a month, changing the water every day, or even twice a day.
I’ve tried smashing the olives with a mallet, which is what many recipes suggest, but don’t like it. Too messy, and I don’t like broken olives. So this year I tried slicing them all once with a paring knife.
Make sure to drop the sliced olives into water immediately or the sliced area will oxidize and turn brown. The whole olive will turn “olive drab” in time, but you don’t want the color to be uneven.
Why change the water so often? Well, if you’ve ever bitten into a fresh olive, you know it makes eating a raw acorn or an unripe persimmon seem fun by comparison. Olives are loaded with a bitter principle called oleuropein that needs to be leached out. Opening the olive allows that stuff to dissolve into the water by osmosis. That’s why you need to change the water daily to maximize the leaching process.
Most recipes for water-curing olives say to change the water for 10 days. I’ve done this before and they are still mega-bitter. So I am recommending another 4 days three weeks, for a full two weeks month.
While you are curing the olives, you need to keep them submerged to avoid oxidation. I use a small bowl on top of the olives as a weight. You could also use cheesecloth.
After your water-cured olives have gone through 10-14 days a month, move them to a brine. I use 1/4 cup kosher salt to 4 cups cool water. I also add 1/2 cup of white wine vinegar, plus any herbs I want to use for flavoring.
What herbs? Always bay leaves and coriander. Beyond that I improvise: Citrus rind, black pepper, chiles, oregano, rosemary, sage, garlic, Sichuan peppercorns, etc. Go easy though: Water-cured olives should taste like olives — slightly bitter, firm and rich. My advice is to choose just a few seasonings and leave it at that. These olives will last a year in the fridge.
Now the olives you see at the top of this post are cured in brine. This is my preferred method, as it is low-maintenance and results in a super-tangy, salty olive that keeps for more than a year and cries out for beer or ouzo. And I like ouzo. A lot.
I chose to cure all my small olives in brine this year. When they’re finished, they should look like the light-colored olive in the top picture; the darker ones were half-ripe when I picked them in November last year.
Brine-curing is stupid easy, but takes FOREVER. Use the same brine as in the end of the water-cure: 1/4 cup kosher salt to 4 cups water, plus 1/2 cup of white wine, cider or simple white vinegar. Submerge the olives in this brine and top with cheesecloth or something else to keep them underwater.
Cover the top of the container loosely (I use those massive jars from the Costco marinated artichoke hearts) and put the jar in a dark, cool place. That’s it. Check it from time to time — meaning every week or so at first. The brine should darken, and you might get a scum on the top. That’s OK.
What’s going on is that your olives are fermenting; it is the fermentation that breaks down the oleuropein over time. That’s why I never wash my olives before curing — I want those natural yeasts on the outside of the olive to do their magic. I change my brine every month or two, when it begins to look extra nasty. I don’t re-rinse the olives, during changes, either, because I want the residue to act as a “starter” to get the next batch of brine going.
Keep in mind you will be in for the long haul: Olives picked in October are typically ready to eat in May or June. It’s a lot like making wine.
Add seasonings after the New Year, otherwise you risk too much spice and not enough olive flavor; this is especially true of chiles. If you find you’ve gone too far, change the brine and don’t add new seasonings, and let it steep for a few weeks. That should calm things down a bit.
For those of you living in olive country, there’s no reason not to forage for your own olives. In most places, they are free for the taking. And once the olives are finished, there is a certain show-off factor when you pull out a plate of olives you cured yourself. “These are your olives? Wow.” Plus, you can flavor them any way you like, which is a bonus.
For the vast majority of you who don’t live in olive country, you can order fresh olives online, but I can’t personally recommend any companies because I have never used them. If any of you have ordered fresh olives online and can vouch for a company, please let me know.
MORE ON CURING OLIVES AT HOME
- Making Cretan Olives with Seville Oranges
- Taking the Cure, from Kevin Weeks’ Seriously Good
- Curing Green Olives, from Cake and Commerce
- Excellent further reading on home-curing olives from UC Davis.
Buy Specialty Spanish Olives Online:
I am intrigued by this, and I must confess that until a few weeks ago when I went to visit my step-sister in Sonoma country, I didn’t even realize that olives grew in California!
There was a time when my husband and I were considering several acres that had an olive grove, which I believe were mission olive trees. Unfortunately, we never purchased the property but my interest in olives was certainly tickled.
Thank you for your post and for reminding me there’s an opportunity ’round every corner in my community to get me some olives and get some pickling done. Now if I could only find the time.
Ah, I remember those olive trees…. loaded with olives year after year, staining the sidewalks underneath with a rich purple goop as all their olives went unharvested. I miss California and I’m so jealous that you can just walk out and harvest olives.
You piqued my curiosity and I tried very hard to find a company online that sells raw, uncured olives. I found only one, whose harvest ended a month early this year. If anyone else comes up with a source, PLEASE email me. I’d really love to try this.
I now have a dreadful craving for olives – and I’m going to be on a train all of tomorrow, so I won’t be able to satisfy it until tomorrow evening!
Lye curing is even more “stupid easy” than the water-cure, but with a minor element of danger. It results in a buttery “olive oil” tasting olive, as opposed to anything with a ferment-based tang. I’ve got a vat going now. Happy olive curing!
Nice post– sounds fun to try. Olive trees are an invasive plant here on our Island, and thus, kept within the confines of “town” at all costs. I hadn’t thought of looking to see if they are producing trees and what variety they might be. I wouldn’t know one from another either, though. I do however have a friend here who grew up on an olive ranch/farm?, so who knows, maybe she’ll know if we can use them. A good exercise in patience too!
By the way, have you ever pressed oil?
Great post. I’ve been curing olives for a few years in New Zealand and usually get my crop from the streets and parks of Auckland. The brine cure is definitely my favorite but I wouldn’t recommend the lye cure. I’ve tried it with an ash cure and it leaves the olives with absolutely no flavor at all.
We have tons of olives around here (Redding, CA) – am excited to try curing some this year. Are there any varieties typically found in public areas that are not edible?
Wonderful post. Can we get you over to our lands in Sclafani Bagni, Sicily to manage the curing production on our 5,000 acres?
Ciao,
Ahh, lucky California folks…picking some free olives. I’ve cured green olives and water was changed daily for about 30 days.
It’s a matter of personal taste…keep changing the water each until the bitterness is gone and then, brine to your liking.
Hank, enjoy!
PitbullLawyer: I may try to lye method next. I am reading more about it, and the trick is to use just enough lye to get to the pit, but no more — else it robs flavor the way Joao says.
Annie: Nope, never pressed oil. You need a press, which is expensive, and some way to filter. Maybe someday…
Tavydog: Nope, all California olives are edible. Public trees are variable, so choose the ones with big, clean (meaning no olive fly) olives.
Peter: 30 days, huh? I may give it a go and update the post if it seems more to my liking. Thanks for the tip.
If you want to try and identify, there’s a very cool (and pricey) World Catalogue of Olive Varieties–Shields (main) library at UCD has a copy. http://www.carterandcavero.com/store/books/world-catalogue-of-olive-varieties.html
I am in the middle of the water soak with some Sevillanos that I got from http://greatolives.com/ It’s been 3 weeks already and they’re still pretty bitter…I’m thinking it will be close to a month by the time they’re ready for the brine.
What a super post. I knew nothing about curing olives- I always learn so much here.
And, sorry about this, GO BLUE.
Hey! I went to Beloit (and went to middle school in Madison). Don’t miss Wisconisn though — too grey. And I wish I’d had this recipe when I was at Davis — all those olives going to waste made me a little crazy … no olives in Montana, especially not after the cold spell we’ve just had — single digits at night …
This is perfectly timed, Hank. This has been on my “to do” list for some time. I must admit that finding and using lye was a little intimidating. Although, I have seen this water curing before, I have read that the lye cure was the preferred method. But, seeing it done successfully, I will try it. Just saw boxes full of olives earlier today. Thanks again.
Thayer: Three weeks, huh? Maybe 14 days will prove to be too short. I’ll update the site to reflect it as time goes by.
Barbara: I assume you are referring the the Wolverines, who were crushed by Iowa last weekend?
Scott: I may try a lye cure next, but it’s kinda intimidating to me, too — too much and you end up with a nasty, flavorless Lindsay-type olive. Yech.
Hi Hank,
I get my olives from Chaffin Orchards in Oraville. He is on twitter @chaffinorchards. Sells his olives for $1 a pound. They taste great and are Beautiful. Mine are Brining now, i cant wait to eat them!
Jenn
Very cool – thanks for posting this. I have a friend with some olive trees and we wanted to try brining them.
Your directions are always so much more accessible than others! Thank you!
Terrific post, Hank!
I’ve got some olives in water, changing a couple of times a day – but they seem to be oxidizing. Anywhere there was a blemish (or along the cut-line from my knife), they’re turning brown. Is this normal? Should I toss them and start again?
Thanks for the guidance!
Jenny
I grew up with an olive tree in my front yard… I always wanted to make them edible, but no one knew how… That poor tree (which also had my tree house in it) has long been cut down (I actually cried that day) but I think I might like to go forage some around Carmichael towards December, I am trying to remember if anyone I know has a tree or two…
Ohhhh, yum. I used to work for Graber Olive House and the pleasure of eating those buttery lye-cured olives whenever I wanted is one of the great memories of my life. There’s a house in my neighborhood with a fruiting tree; I should walk over there and see if it isn’t too late to harvest it.
You super smart Californians! I don’t think I can get green olives here in Toronto though I would love to experiment like you do.
Hey Hank
I just bought a bag of green olives from an Italian deli here in Vancouver and will start brining shortly. What kind of container is best?Would a plastic bucket be safe and inert or should I try to find large glass jars. I have some old stoneware Chinese pickled vegetable pots in my garden I could also use but they would require a lot of cleaning inside..
This is exciting-have been talking about doing this for years. Some recipes call for pickling salt but you used Kosher-aside from texture what is the difference? Is there a risk of botulism if the curing is done incorrectly?
Thanks
Linda: I use kosher salt so my measurements are the same as yours. It is free of any addititves, and by mentioning the kind of salt, my 1/4 cup of salt to the brine is the same as yours — if you’d used fine-grain salt you would have too much in your brine.
I use glass containers. Go to an Asian market and look for Korean kim chee jars.
Never heard of botulism with olives. I’ll look into it.
Thank you for the wonderful and useful post!
It’s becoming my California tradition too.
I brine-cured some black olives last year, they did take forever, but they came out very tasty.
I just picked up a few pounds of green olives in the local park, and I am going to use your water method on them.
I hope for some black olives later on, but with these early storms that knock them to the ground they may never have a chance to ripen.
I get my fresh olives shipped from Penna in Orland, CA – GreatOlives.com I’ve always done ripe (black) olives, but he sold only green olives this year – hence my search of your site looking for guidance. I do the water method, changing it every day. I was away from home for a week, so for that week I added salt (kosher, enough so a raw egg in shell floats), then switched back to daily water changes when I got back. Today, my olives are ready to cure. I’m going to try: vinegar, garlic, lemons, red bell pepper and oregano. Any other ideas???
Hi Hank -Linda again
So I cut a slit in my green olives and they’ve been soaking in water since Saturday. The slit has turned brown on all of the olives and there are brown spots developing on some of them. Can they still be cured in brine or are they spoiling?
The only reasons I can come up with for the browning are I cut the slit using a Kuhn Rikon knife (carbon steel blade) and I used tap water. I think I may put half of the batch in a brine now and continue the water leaching with the rest.
Any ideas?
Hi
We planted 7 olive trees, 3 are 3 year old and 4 are 1 year old. We tried salt water brining last year on about a pint and they never tasted right. We just picked about 3 times as many black little olives today. Anyone have suggestions for what to try this time?
Linda: Sorry for the late reply, but the sort version is they should be fine. My water-cured olives always turn “olive” instead of that pretty green. Have your olives lost their bitterness yet?
Holly: You can do that brine cure on the black olives just fine. The different taste is probably fermentation — is it a tang? You can lye-cure black olives, too, but I haven’t done it yet.
I put my olives into the water cure 11 days ago and they’re half brown/olive green as well. I’m assuming this is normal and waiting the full 2 weeks to taste one. I agree with Linda though that they start “browning” by the slit first. Is it normal?
Hi Hank
I cured two batches -one using your recipe with kosher salt and one using Maurice Penna’s suggested recipe. I called him and he gave me salt quantities by weight-not volune and I made the recipe using pickling salt (heavier than Kosher salt). It’s been a week now and I tasted both batches – the olives seem a little bitter. Hank I noticed that you changed the water soaking time above from 2 weeks to one month-wondering if I should put them back in water for another 2 weeks or if the brining will pull out the bitterness if I change the brine as you suggest. I didn’t notice a difference in taste kosher vs pickling salt but there is a slight difference in the PH level after a week. I think that the PH will continue to change as the olives cure. I added fennel and bay leaf to the brine and will add dry garlic later.
I’m hoping to do a batch of black olives soon as well using the brine method.
Jovi: Yes, perfectly normal.
Linda: I switched out the water time because they were still too bitter for me. Peter from the Kalofagas blog (he’s Greek), suggested a month, and as it is now officially a month, I can say my olives are no longer bitter — so Peter’s advice was sound.
Brining will pull out the rest of the bitterness over time. Keep them in brine and change it every month. Taste your olives and they should be good to go by Christmas.
Almost time for black olives! I go in December…
Thanks Hank-
things are going swimmingly! The brown area from the knife cut has morphed into green – will taste them every week and test PH also. Will also change brine monthly as you suggested. Get the feeling that there are many ways of doing this. Going to do a brine for some black olives as soon as I can get some.This is fun!
Ok, one more question. When doing the brine, should I put all the spices in a cheesecloth or just let them float around with the olives?
Last year I tried my first effort of curing black olives. I washed them and placed them in an old stone crock. I simply covered them with layers of sea salt (no water). I found that kosher had little effect. I did not slice the olives. I left them just as I picked them from the tree. I stirred them every couple of weeks, and changed the salt once in three months. After three months I began to sample them every week until I got a flavor I liked. In total it took about four months, after which I dipped them in boiling water and left them to dry over night before placing them in jars of olive oil, vinegar, thyme, garlic and a slice of lemon. They stored nicely in the refrigerator and were absolutely delicious. I just picked a another batch today and have them in the sea salt ready for a their hibernation.
Do you slice the brine cured olives too at the start? Or only the water cure? I’ve seen brining recipes suggesting either way (though seems like the slice reduces the brining time a lot). Thanks!
David: No, I don’t slice the brine cured olives. I like them whole. It probably would speed the curing process, but I like uncut olives for that preparation.
Hank, you are amazing. I just love the fact that you find things most people take for granted (olive trees) and make something delicious of of them. I am so going to try this! Any olive groves you know of in the Land Park area? I’m too late for green, but maybe black…
Hi Hank
The olive brine is developing a white clumpy residue throughout the jar -concentrated at the top and bottom. Is this just fermentation or is it a bad residue?
Thanks
I am preparing home-cured olives (black & green) for the first time, curing them in brine, then replacing the brine with solution of 1:2 parts vinegar and water (adding garlic, chili, fennel or thyme). I am concerned about botulism, as the jars I am using are not air tight. Advice on this question would be greatly appreciated, as so far I have not found the question addressed anywhere on line.
Linda: That happens to mine, too. Change the brine and add some vinegar.
Bob: That is a LOT of vinegar! No botulism in that batch… I usually go with 1/2 to 1 cup of vinegar to a quart of briny water. Botulism needs a non-acid environment, and an anerobic one, so with that much vinegar and air circulating you will get mold (which I find to be normal) but no botulism — at least in my experience.
Thanks a bunch, Hank. I suspected that 1:2 might be a bit much vinegar. Do you know what is a good Ph level to maintain in stored olives? Should I test Ph level? If so, what kind of device would you recommend?
Hank, I live in Northern CA and travel to Italy fairly often on business. I was a guest at a home in Italy where I was fed some Olives before dinner that the family cured themselves. I do have a few olive trees at my home so this peeked my curiosity and asked for the Recipe. We enjoy the harvest event in October just like you describe, only I am on the ladder and my wife is below drinking the wine, I do get to watch Cal Football (Go Bears!) after, so all is good.
The recipe I was given was almost identical to what you have written with the exception of white wine vinegar, I’ll try that next year.
My first year curing was last year, some Olives developed a slimy coating with a bad taste, I threw the whole batch out because you never knew when you would get one. Have you had this experience before?
I am in my second year curing now with the same recipe and so far they are tasting great, 30 days left. My second question is, after curing, how do you store the olives? Do you use the same brine solution and after filling the jar with olives, do you use the same brine solution in the jar? I am almost to the point of removing from the brine and herb solution, what’s next? I didn’t think far enough ahead to ask them that, plus my Italian is not great. : )
Boy howdy! I’ve been looking for this advice. Me and the hubby just planted an olive tree. We can’t wait to cure them (in a few years, of course).
Thanks for the as-always, excellent advice.
Thank you so much for this post! Back in August, I wanted to brine my own olives. I was looking around on the internet for resources on how to do it, and I was so overwhelmed because it just seemed like a random hodgepodge of information and nothing concise and complete. This has really made my day. I am so excited to be able to do this this year.
Hello Hank,
Your blog was the first I have found with really useful information on olives, which is what I was searching for when I found it but I have learned so much from all you have to say.
My question is about olives, we have 8 trees that are about 12 years old, they are fabulous to look at and very good producers, all organic and no pests. Last year my mother and husband decided to cure some of them, with very mixed results…ok, they stink. I shudder to even look at them.
I lived for many years as a teen in Greece with my family and I was the one who had the job of smashing the olives with a brick to break them so my aunt could cure them. That and the harvesting was pretty much my only exposure to the process but having come from a culinary family I have good palate and knew from observing that they were making a few mistakes.
My mother had met an old Italian gentleman who lives down the street and he “taught” them and I deferred to him. I am sorry we did because the results were not what I think they should have been.
I noticed that you revised the time frames you used to cure your olives, do you feel that your revised time frames worked well this year?
Thanks so much for your great article and I hope they keep coming!
Olga: Yes, I changed the soak times for the water cure because I’d not had good luck with the shorter times everyone seems to recommend. These olives, with the new soak times, were WAY better.
Thanks for the inspiration Hank!
I live in SE Arizona, where olive trees are abundant – one of the desert dwellers that does well here. Most people here find them a nuisance, and so the fruiting branches get cut away and tossed. I, on the other hand, have always thought this was a horrible waste but could never find anyone who knew the process of making them edible.
I’m very interested in your brine technique. From time to time, I make my own cheeses, so the added time is not a concern – somehow, the wait makes the finished product that much more enjoyable. I was curious, however, if you also need to break, or slice, the olives before placing them in the brine, as you did for the water cure? It would seem to make sense that you would still want to leach the bitter properties from them in this manner, but then I don’t know if salt is somehow a conduit to this process on it’s own.
I look forward to your reply – and really, thanks – you don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this. I should’ve “Googled” it a long time ago!