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Olives straight off the tree are mouth-puckeringly bitter. But transformed through brining or dry salting, they become the delicious morsels we’re familiar with.
The Origin of Your Olive
If you’re lucky enough to live where olive trees grow — anywhere with a Mediterranean climate, including California, the Middle East, North Africa, parts of Australia, parts of Central and South America, and of course, Italy, Spain, France, Turkey, and Greece — then you can easily cure your own. If you don’t live in any of those places, don’t despair; you can find raw olives in late fall in some big city gourmet stores. (For example, New York City folks can get them at the Grand Central Market from November through early December.)
The Original Olive Brine
Although I grew up in California, I’ve spent most of my life in northeastern America, where olive trees can’t grow because the winters are too cold. But Papou, my Greek grandfather, used to cure his own olives. I visited him in Greece a few times when I was a kid.
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I remember him cutting a slit down each raw olive lengthwise, which is what I do today. Then he’d put the olives in a mesh bag and hang them over the edge of the pier in front of his house. There they’d be washed by the salty waters of the Gulf of Patras for a few weeks, during which time the bitterness would leach out of the olives.
Simulate Seawater
You say you don’t happen to live near clean-but-salty seawater in which to brine olives for weeks as my Greek grandfather did? Neither do I. When I lived in Jerusalem for a couple of years, I found myself surrounded by an abundance of olive trees to forage. I did a little research and learned how to brine them in saltwater in a way that mimics Papou’s seawater cure.
Photo by Leda Meredith
But something was still missing. I was sure I remembered there was another step after the brining that really brought Papou’s olives to life.
What happened next was magical: I’d just put several pounds of olives into their initial saltwater soak, when I decided to reorganize my office. From one of the bookshelves, I took down an old spiral notebook stuffed with recipe cards and clippings from food magazines. One recipe card fell out.
The card was in my Grandma Nea’s handwriting, and had on it the recipe for “How to Finish Olives So That They Are Good to Eat.” Her instructions made it clear that this was the final flavoring step after the brine treatment. I read the ingredients: vinegar, water, herbs, a top layer of olive oil. … This was what I remembered Papou’s olives soaking in! (I guess they weren’t just Papou’s olives, after all.)
Recipe for Greek-Style Salt-Brined Olives
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Fermentation Time
Initial Brine: 1 week
Second Brine: 1 month
Third Brine (optional): 1 month
Total Brine Time: 6 to 10 weeks
Shelf Life: About 4 months
This recipe translates my Papou’s olive-curing method into something you can do in your own kitchen. You can use underripe olives for this method, but it’s especially suitable for fully ripe, purple to almost black olives. It may lack the ambiance of the Mediterranean, but the results are just as tasty!
Yield: 1 quart.
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Ingredients
For initial brine
- Enough fresh olives to fill 1 quart jar
- 1/3 cup coarse, noniodized salt
- 1 quart water
For second brine (and optional third brine)
- 1/3 cup coarse, noniodized salt
- 1 quart water
For flavoring
- Cloves garlic, halved, to taste
- Fresh oregano, to taste
- Fresh parsley, to taste
- Fresh celery leaves, to taste
- Fresh dill, to taste
- Fresh sage, optional
- 1 tablespoon coarse, noniodized salt
- 1/2 cup vinegar
- 1 quart water
- Extra-virgin olive oil
Instructions
- Remove any leaves and twigs from your olive harvest. Put the olives in a colander in your kitchen sink and hose them down well.
- Use a paring knife to cut a single slit lengthwise in each olive. As you work, discard any olives that are shriveled or have insect-bored holes.
- Put the olives into a clean glass quart jar, or a few smaller jars. Narrow-neck jars are better than wide-mouth jars for this, because they eliminate the need to weight the olives in order to keep them submerged in the brine. If you use a wide-mouth jar, use a fermentation weight to keep the olives fully submerged, or make your own simple weight by filling a zip-close bag with water.
- Prepare the initial brine by dissolving the salt in the water. Bringing the water to a boil decreases the time it takes the salt to dissolve, but you’ll have to wait until it cools to room temperature before proceeding to the next step. You can speed things up by putting the hot brine in the refrigerator.
- Pour the brine over the prepared olives. Fill all the way to the rim of the jar. Some brine will overflow when you loosely cover the jar with the lid, and that’s OK. Place the jar on a small plate to catch any overflow.
- Let sit in an out-of-the-way space at room temperature for 1 week.
- Drain the olives. Cover them with a second brine. Cover the jar as before, and let soak for 1 month. Drain again. Taste the olives. If they’re still too bitter for you, cover them with a third brine and give them another month. Otherwise, proceed to flavoring.
- Tuck some halved cloves of garlic and sprigs of fresh herbs in amongst the drained olives. NOTE: Grandma Nea recommended oregano, parsley, celery leaves, and dill. She also added the note, “Why not use some sage?” I don’t know if she actually ever tried this, and I haven’t yet.
- Next, combine the salt, vinegar, and water. Stir to dissolve the salt. Pour over the olives, leaving about 1 inch of headspace.
- Pour 3/4 to 1 inch of olive oil over the other ingredients, and cover the jar loosely with a lid. Wait at least a week for the flavors to mingle before eating the olives. They’ll keep for months.
NOTE: Grandma Nea made single-jar batches and stored them in her big, American-sized refrigerator. Back in Greece, Papou made big batches and stored them in a plastic tub at room temperature. Your choice, depending on your storage space. I do both.
Leda Meredith is an instructor at the New York Botanical Garden, where she received a certificate in ethnobotany. She leads foraging tours, demonstrates food preservation techniques, and teaches medicinal and edible plant workshops. She’s also the author of seven books, including the most recent Pickling Everything. Find her on her blog!