Curing Olives: This is how we did it

Monday, May 21, 2012
After having Olive trees for the last couple of years, we finally decided to try our hand at curing our own olives.

This is what we did, and it seems to be successful, the olives are a little more bitter than the ones you would buy at the store, but still they are pretty good.

It does take a long time, and is a fair amount of work, for us it was just about seeing if we could do it, and trying it out. I always feel a sense of achievement when we make/ grow our own food!

We put the olives in a container with fresh water, and changed the water everyday for 10 days. (tip: fill zip lock bags with water to place on top of the olives so none of them are floating only half in the water, they should be completely immersed)

We found out part way through the process that we should have poked some small holes in the olives so the water and brine can seep into the olive. So before you soak the olives use a fork or similar to poke each individual olive.

We then made a brine solution 1 part Salt, 10 parts Water. The brine should be dumped out and replaced with a fresh solution once a week for 4 weeks.

After this we tasted them and woah they were salty, so we soaked them overnight in just water, which seemed to help a lot.

Finally, we made a weak brine solution (about 1/3 of the salt that was in the previous brine solution) to soak the olives in. We then added about 1cm of olive oil on top of the olives and brine, this is to seal the olives so the air cannot make it through to the water.

We've had it in this for about a week, and they are ready to go. Yum.

Ahh, edible plants, they are my favorite kind. We have olives across the road at the park, I'm tempted to go and pick them as well.

I would love to know if you end up trying this, and how your olives turn out. If you have any questions, I'll try to help!



Karen xx



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