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While it's spiced pumpkin season back in the US, here it's the season for making several of my favorite recipes, one being homemade salt cured olives. Of course I happen to love them all, so you'll find both types of recipes here on the blog.
I am, after all, half Spanish and half American.
When I was growing up, if you had told me that olives and avocados would end up being amongst my very favorite foods, I would have have thought you are crazy! I was pretty sure that I didn't like either.
When it comes to avocados, I'm not sure if I had ever even tried one, or if I just decided one day that they were gross based on appearances alone.
As for olives, I was a bit of a “racist” and was sure that I only liked the black ones.
That doesn't really surprise me so much, though, because I only remember having seen green olives with “pimiento” inside them. Even to this day, I don't really like those very much.
When I came to Spain for a visit with a friend of mine, almost 20 years ago now…
No way!! Really!?!?!
…I was pretty much forced into trying olives again.
We had been graciously invited as guests to the house of an old friend of my mom's in Madrid, and his mother had made “smashed” green olives from the olives from their backyard olive tree. They proudly offered them to me. How could I be so rude as to not at least try them, despite my hatred for green olives?!?
To my surprise, I LOVED them!
After a few days in Madrid, we headed for the East coast, and I decided that I would give buying olives a chance. So, I bought several varieties, and ended up loving most of them. Still, I couldn't help but think that the homemade “smashed” olives were still my favorites.
What more can I say about olives?
They are one of the most perfect snacks around, made up of healthy fats that are very good for you.
It's hard to find something to eat here if you go out to breakfast and want to avoid white bread. Most people order toast in the morning, and those who don't likely order croissants or ensaimadas, or some other locally made pastry.
So, what have I been doing? I eat from the plate of olives that gets set on the table as a sort of tapa to accompany brunch.
Why do you need to salt cure the olives?
Olives are very bitter and have an astringent like flavor when you first pick them off the tree. Unless they have sun dried for quite awhile, they just aren't palatable at all!
This is my favourite way to prepare mine:
Homemade Salt Cured Olives
Ingredients
- fresh olives
- salt
- water
- extra virgin olive oil
- herbs like rosemary or thyme optional
Instructions
- Rinse the olives, and separate out olives with bruises or "suspicious" holes in them.
- Meanwhile mix together salt and water to achieve a brine solution. I didn't measure the salt, but used enough so that it wouldn't all completely dissolve, mixing it every once in awhile to help dissolve as much of the salt into the solution as possible.
- Smash or make cuts in each olive to help the salt solution get inside. If you skip this step, you can still make cured olives, but they will take a lot longer (Around a month vs. around a week.) If you have a lot of olives, you could consider doing a batch of each, that way you'll have olives ready right away, and will also have olives that will last longer.
- Add your olives to a glass container with a lid, and cover them with the brine solution. I usually just pour off the liquid, leaving any undissolved salt in the bottom of the container that I used to mix the solution.
- To avoid waste, I usually go through the olives that I have separated out, cutting out the bad parts. Olives with holes in them likely have little worms hiding inside them. Even strange looking brownish olives without obvious holes, may have insects hiding inside. If a very small portion of an olive is affected by a small bruise or something, I remove that part. The ones that are worse I just throw away!
- After a couple of days, you can start to try the olives for taste. They should begin to lose the original bitterness. If they still seem very bitter, you can begin to change the water by draining the olives, and adding new brine solution.
- Keep tasting the olives for bitterness every day or so. They will be salty, but should be getting progressively less bitter. When you find they are no longer too bitter, it is time to stop brining them.
- Drain the brine solution, and add fresh water to the olives for several hours, this will help remove some of the salt. If you still find them too salty, you can repeat this step until they get to an acceptable level of saltiness.
- I usually leave my olives in the final water bath. That way there is a bit of salt in the solution itself, but not too much.
- Add in any herbs that you like. Popular choices here are rosemary and thyme.
- Pour a thin layer of a good quality olive oil over the top of the water.
- Your olives are ready to be served!
I have been curing mine in a salt brine for 3 months. They have been covered with cheesecloth and refridgerated. They are turning gray / black, and I’m wondering if they are safe to consume.
Hi Gretchen,
While they’re probably still safe to consume, I’ve found that they don’t taste very good after a long time in the brine, when they start to change colors.
On the other hand, olives that are packed in only salt, shrivel up with time and look like raisins. (They also turn black.)
Those actually taste very good after that change.
As long as your brine solution was made with enough salt, it isn’t likely that anything dangerous will have been able to grow in your mixture. If you don’t see anything strange like a mold growing on top, I’d give them a taste and see what you think. (I try much more questionable things all of the time. hahahaha, but perhaps I shouldn’t be pushing anybody to do what I do in those cases.) 😉
I have been experimenting with olives growing on trees here in the Southern California desert. I am not sure what type of olive these are but they range in color on the trees from green to a nearly dark purple or almost black. I have decided to salt brine some whole, unsmashed/unslit darker olives and as best as I could tell – worm free (but as I have been trying other ways, I see that in my case there are worms present in most of the dark olives. I have been halving some to see just how prevalent the worm is and it is in about 8/10 olives! I still decided that where the damage was minimal, I just cut away the bad parts and am salt brining these too. I expect these cut ones to cure must sooner than the whole ones. And, I suspect that the whole ones will probably have worms anyway now that I have investigated this crop.
In another batch, I have begun a salt cure in a large zip lock type bag with some whole olives.
This is all just an experiment as we are camped here for the winter and the olives were just too tempting to not try and make edible.
I am only about 7 or 8 days into the curing so far and will update when I get some results. I just changed the brine in the cut olives today as they were still bitter.
Cheers!
I just took a closer look at the whole olives I am brining and I noticed that most of them are beginning to show obvious worm holes as the skin color has changed and made it easier to see.
I’ll probably discard this experimental batch and go collect some more olives before the trees are bare. I will cut these olives and remove any bad parts and will brine like the other pieces batch which is beginning to look good as far as I can tell.
Stay tuned…
Hi Bob!
Yes, the worms make the process take much longer. I find removing them the most frustrating part of this process. If you are lucky to find worm free olives, you can save yourself a lot of work and time!
I found that I really loved the olives that were placed in only salt too. (Not a brine with water, just packed in salt.)
They turn into what looks like olive “raisins.” 😉
If you’re having fun experimenting, give it a try. They last much longer than the ones cured in brine.
Hi My Mom taught us that first we wash the olives then smash them with a rock or brick stuff them in a jar with garlic fennel hair and a teaspoon of salt. In the meantime in a pot we would have water boiling with salt. When cooled you would put an egg to see if it floats if it does the water is ready to fill the jars. We would store them in basement for about 7 to 9 months. Then they would be ready. Is that wrong?
Hi Suzette,
I don’t believe in there being right or wrong ways, unless, of course, it doesn’t work for you. 😉
I’ve just done what they seem to do around here, but I’ve found that they don’t keep very long once you take them out of the brine. It appears that your brine doesn’t have as much salt as mine, which may be why it appears that it takes longer for yours to cure. They may have the added advantage of keeping for longer, though?
I may have to try your method next time to compare.
My intuition says that it would be a good idea to make some both ways…
My method may allow for quicker curing so you can almost instantly enjoy the olives. Your method allows you to enjoy some of the olives in several months. By that time mine probably aren’t very good anymore.
See- the best of both worlds. 😉
why do some olives turn yellow in same batch
Hi Tony,
I’m not sure why that may have happened. I don’t remember ever having had any turn yellow. Did the yellow ones taste differently or have a different texture?
I’m wondering if it may have to do with a different variety of olive- or perhaps it’s something else. I wish I could be of more help.
I made them this year 2017 and one of my jars just exploded today. Why did that happen. Now I am afraid the other jars will explode. I always made mine this way. I just washed the olives and then added salt and water to each jar and added the olives and then put the lids on and closed them shut. The jar that exploded today was a jar that had a single lid all one piece instead of the two piece lids we use for our tomato sauce. I wonder if that made a difference or is it because maybe I added too much water right up to the top of the jar. Now I am afraid if the other jars may explode. I want to open them all up again and maybe take some olives out so the jars are not so full but I am afraid incase they will go bad. Does anyone have a solution as to why that jar exploded. I have been making them the same way for a while and this is the first time this has ever happened.
Hi Donna,
Wow, I’m sorry to hear that happened!
I’ve never had it happen, but I don’t normally fully seal them nor do I fill them to the top of the jar. Well, I might, but we eat them right away, so they haven’t stayed that way for very long.
I’ve never tried preserving them.
So, are you saying you used a canning technique on them and they exploded?
It makes sense in a way because it would be like the olives are fermenting and building up gas, much like when you make sauerkraut. I’ve never tried to preserve sauerkraut by any sort of canning technique either.
I haven’t really found a great way to preserve these sorts of olives. I just always thought of the salt technique as a nice one to use for this time of year when there are lots of fresh olives around. They don’t keep very well for me, and if I try to save them, the quality has always declined quickly. We just eat them quicker than that happens. I find it interesting that you were able to preserve them, though, but sad to hear about the explosion.
Do the olives taste good after having kept for so long? I’d think that if the jar exploded it’s because a lot of fermenting activity is going on.
If it were me, I’d probably open them to let the gas buildup out, but, yes, you’re right, that will almost most definitely make the olives go bad more quickly. Perhaps freezing them at the ideal point would work, but I haven’t tried that either, so I don’t know if that would affect their texture. Sorry I can’t be of more help!
(I can perhaps ask around, though, and see if someone around here knows a good way of preserving salt cured olives!)
What kind of salt? And how much?
Hi Kim,
I just used sea salt.
I wanted a saturated solution of salt, so I added as much as I could until no more would dissolve into the water. To get a better idea, I just did a search for you, and I saw that they say that 100g of room temperature water can dissolve about 37g of salt. So, make a solution in that way, adjusting the amount you need according to how many olives you have. I hope that helps!
I cured my olives 8 months ago using a different recipe & they’ve been in glass jars with a brine solution, some herbs & 1 cm of olive oil on the top.
They are too salty – what can I do to rectify this?
Can I empty some of the liquid (say 1/2) out & top up with fresh water (no salt)?
Hi Linda,
You can definitely try placing them in water to help reduce the salt. I would only do it with a small batch at a time, only an amount that you want to be eating quickly.
Usually, salt cured olives don’t last very long. They tend to get soft, so I’m actually surprised that yours have kept for so many months. If you cure completely in salt, the olives actually turn into something (delicious) that looks like raisins.
Once you reduce the salt level, they definitely won’t keep for as long and will tend to go soft quickly.
It’s all about experimentation, really.
Hi. Can you clarify step 4 for me please? Are the olives left in the brine or poured off during the week they are processed? Thanks!
Hi Danielle,
Let me see if I can try to help clarify what I meant.
What I was saying is that I mixed the salt and water in a separate container to the point of saturation. I added more salt than what the water could hold and some salt stays in the bottom of that container.
When it was time to add the brine to the olives, I just used the saturated liquid (my brine) by pouring that into the container with the olives, and I left the salt at the bottom of the other container which just gets discarded.
You leave the olives in the brine and periodically check on them to see if they are losing their bitterness. Some olives cure much more quickly than others. Those that are more bitter may need to have their water changed once or twice to help the process along.
I hope that makes sense and clears things up.
I loved this beautiful tutorial! I have always been an olive lover and was interested in home curing. Thanks for demystifying the process. I’ll definitely try it this year when I have the opportunity to get fresh olives again.
Thanks, Jeannette!
I’ve been intimidated by curing olives myself for many years. I tried some strange process a couple of years back and they didn’t turn out very well for me, so I kept putting off trying it again.
This process has worked well for me several times now, though, so it’s my favorite.
I’m also trying to directly salt cure some whole olives, meaning directly in salt and not in a brine. They have shrivelled up, as I knew to expect, but I’m not sure how much I’m going to like them. 😉 I’ll let you know if I’m wrong and they’re great, though.