How To Pick The Best Olives

How To Pick The Best Olives starts with selecting fresh green olives that are firm and undamaged. When choosing olives for pickling, it’s best to pick them by hand to avoid damage. Also, make sure the olives are still green, as darker colors indicate overripeness and are not ideal for pickling.

Selecting a Cure Solution

Olives have a bitter, firm flavor. This is primarily due to the presence of oleuropein in olives. To get rid of the bitter taste, they must be cured.

Curing methods include oil-cured, water-cured, brine-cured, salt-dry-cured, and lye-cured.

Water Curing

We suggest this method for big green olives.

After washing the olives, next, crack the olive meat with a stone or hammer, being careful not to bruise the pit. Then, soak the olives in cold water for a week, making sure to change the water twice a day so that you remove the bitterness.

Fill the pan halfway with brine (approximately 1 part sea salt to 10 parts water) and lemon juice (about 1 part lemon juice to 10 parts water), transfer to jars if preferred, and chill for several hours before serving.

Brine Curing

This method is especially appropriate for black olives. To begin with, wash the olives thoroughly, and then make a cut in each olive (top to bottom) without breaking the pit. Afterward, put the olives in brine (1 part sea salt to 10 parts water) in a pan. Be sure to completely submerge and cover the olives.

Next, cure the olives for three weeks, stirring the pan daily and replacing the brine weekly. However, depending on the type of olives, this process could take 5 to 6 weeks.

Finally, when they have reached the desired flavor, put them in jars with brine (1 part sea salt to 10 parts water), 4 tablespoons of vinegar, and a layer of olive oil on top.