Dry Salt Cured Olives Recipe
I had no idea how black olives were made until I started making my own at home. For some reason, I never wondered about it until that day. I've had home-made olives a few times before and they were all bitter and soft. Maybe that's why I wasn't very confident that black olives could be made at home. That's why I made my first trial with green olives. If I had known it was so easy to make black olives, I would have started with black olives first. If you have never tried curing olives at home before, I recommend making your first try with black ones. Once you learn that it is so easy to make olives at home and think about the additives that are said to be added to store bought olives, you will definitely not want to eat olives that you have not made at home.
To make black olives, all you need is brine/pickling salt. The olives are thoroughly sorted and washed, then dried. This is quite important. If the olives remain wet, mold may develop. The olives are placed in a cloth bag by placing a few handfuls of olives and sprinkling a handful of salt on them. The bag is hung somewhere to allow the olives to release their juice. The place where the bag is hung should be at room temperature, away from sunlight. They can deteriorate in the sun, they soften in a very cold place and do not release water.
How to Remove Bitter Juice from Black Olives?
Cloth bags are not the only way to extract the juice from olives. Cloth bags are the most suitable method for my conditions and the healthiest method for me. Apart from that, you can put black olives in the saddle. Since the saddle is perforated, the juice from the olives will drain easily.
Another method is to put the olives in large jars and drain the water accumulated at the bottom every day. This is the method I stay away from because the olives waiting in the water at the bottom seem to soften too much and could be smashed. In my opinion, methods in which the water does not wait with the olives but flows immediately are more acceptable.
The way to do this by using large containers is to make small holes in the bottom of large plastic water containers with heated skewers and put the olives into these containers. The olive juice flowing in this way will immediately flow out of the holes. But it is understandable that you do not want to use water containers where it is not possible to be completely sure of the plastic quality.
Pay Attention to These When Curing Black Olives!
Among these options, you can choose and use the method that best suits you and your home conditions. No matter which method you use, there are some things you need to pay attention to. You should not put a very large amount of olives in the same container. For example, if you keep 20 kg of olives in the same container, the olives at the bottom will be smashed. So try not to put more than 5 kg of olives in one container. For the same reason, shake the olives every day to move them. If you are going to use a water container, you can lay it on its side and roll it back and forth. I shook the cloth bag and mixed it with my hands. If I kept it hanging for a few days, I also put it in a strainer and kept it upside down or on its side for a few days.
The olives are done when they shrivel up and stop releasing juice and when you taste them you see that they are not bitter. What you need to do at this stage is to clean the olives from excess salt. To do this, you can simply sift the olives, wash them or soak them in water. It all depends on how salty olives you want to get. If you are going to wash the olives or soak them in water, you need to dry them completely afterwards. Otherwise they may spoil.
After drying the olives, you can store them in two ways. The first is by mixing it with sunflower oil in glass jars. It may seem like olive oil would be more suitable, but since olive oil freezes in the cold, sunflower oil would be more suitable. The second storage method is freezing. You can freeze ready-to-eat olives for up to a year. When you want to use them, you can wait them to thaw in the refrigerator and then consume them by sauceing as you wish.
You can serve the olives plain or mixed with olive oil and your favorite dry or fresh herbs and spices.
Enjoy the recipe...
Dry Salt Cured Olives Recipe with Video
Preparation
- Separate and throw the stems of the olives and any wormy or rotten ones,
- Wash, drain the olives,
- Place them handfuls into a cloth bag, sprinkling salt between and them,
- Tie the bag and hang it in a high place and put a basin under it,
- Shake the bag every day to move the olives and open the bag and check them,
- They will start releasing water in a few days,
- Keep checking and mixing for about 6 weeks until the water is completely drained and the bitterness disappears (you can start tasting them after they start to shrivel),
- Wash the olives (you can soak them in water to make them salt-free), take excess water with a cloth, then spread them in an open air and/or sunny place and dry them completely,
- Divide them into jars, add a few tablespoons of sunflower oil to them, close the lids and shake until all the olives are covered in oil, or put them in plastic bags and freeze them.
Enjoy...