To prepare olives for water curing, you must first individually cut or crack each olive so that the bitter oleuropein can more easily leach out. The prepared olives are soaked in water and the water is changed daily over a week or more, depending on the olive style and the desired level of bitterness.
Combine 1 part salt to 10 parts water and pour over the olives in a bowl or pot. Weigh them down with a plate and let sit for 1 week. Drain the olives and repeat the brining process for another week. Do this two more times so they brine for about a month or so.
Pour the salted water over the olives etc until they are well covered. Seal the container. Store in a cool place and keep the container sealed for 6-8 weeks for black olives, and 8-10 weeks for green olives. Open and taste, if the olives are still bitter, leave the to cure for another week or so and test again.
These olives are cured using a closely guarded family secret. The process behind these olives took years to develop to this superior standard, as there is no salt used in any part of the curing process.
Harvested olives must be “cured” to remove the bitterness in order to make them palatable. The most common curing processes use brine, dry salt, water, or lye treatments. During these curing processes the water-soluble oleuropein compound is leached out of the olive flesh.
Are olives edible off the branch? While olives are edible straight from the tree, they are intensely bitter. Olives contain oleuropein and phenolic compounds, which must be removed or, at least, reduced to make the olive palatable.
Once picked, olives have a short shelf life (no more than three days). So the couple of days before the press is when ALL the picking needs to happen.
The Romans invented curing olives with lye. They obtained lye from wood ashes.
There are some basic rules for preserving olives
Make sure your containers for brining are clean, unchipped and made from non-reactive materials: glass, stainless steel, enamelware, stoneware, porcelain, earthenware, terracotta or plastic. Always clean jars and lids before use. turn brown and soft and taste mouldy.
To cure the olives, they need to rest in a saltwater brine for a few months. You need a 3:1 ratio of olives to saltwater brine. For example, for every full bucket of olives, you'll need about a third of a bucket of brine. Find a food-grade container or bucket/s large enough to fit all your olives.
Brine-curing is easy, but takes a long time. You make a brine of 1/4 cup kosher salt (I use Diamond Crystal) to 4 cups water, plus 1/2 cup of vinegar: white wine, cider or simple white vinegar. Submerge the olives in this brine and top with cheesecloth or something else to keep them underwater.
Pick the olives when they nearly ripe, when they have begun to change colour from green to pinkish purple but are not fully black. When most of the crop have become this colour, harvest all the olives off the tree.
Olives are typically high in salt due to the fact that they are cured or packaged in brine or salt water, containing about 0.6g salt per five olives.
To make some delicious salt-cured (brined) olives, we'll need fresh olives, salt, and filtered water. (Choose unchlorinated water.) You can use any salt you like. I generally use sea salt.
Place them in an airtight container without brine and they'll stay perfect in the freezer for six months.
You can make a simple brine solution using a ratio of 1 parts salt to 10 parts water. Use an unprocessed salt such as rock salt or sea salt. Cover the olives with the brine in a bucket, jar or container with a lid. Make sure the olives are again completely submerged.
In a pan, soak the olives in brine (1 part sea salt to 10 parts water). Make sure the olives are submerged (use something to weight them down) and cover. Cure the olives for 3 weeks, shaking the pan each day and changing the brine each week, then taste for bitterness.
There are two ways. The first involves immersion in water: the olives should be completely covered and left in the liquid for two weeks, making sure to change the water twice a day. The second involves the use of caustic soda: dip the olives after adding caustic soda to the water.
Olives are inedible before they are cured. Many people don't know that olives are actually inedible when they are first picked. Raw olives straight from the tree contain oleuropein, an extremely bitter compound that makes olives completely unpalatable.
If you're looking to reduce your saturated fat intake, black olives are a slightly better choice. If you're trying to boost your vitamin E intake, green olives are a healthier option than their black counterparts.
Freshly harvested olives are very bitter and therefore need to be 'cured' to make them pleasantly edible. The bitterness comes from their high polyphenolic and tannic acid content. However, freshly harvested olives are not harmful when eaten before curing.