On Friday I got my box of twenty pounds of green olives from Chaffin Family Orchards and set about curing them.
Twenty pounds of olives is a lot it turns out! There are several methods you can use to cure them, some involving lye (commercially cured olives are done in this way), some involving vinegar and some involving just salt or water.
There is a fairly comprehensive handout from the University of California and I chose to follow the directions for Sicilian olives for part of mine. I’m assuming as with lacto-fermented foods that you want to keep the olives under water to prevent mold from forming so I used my Harsch fermenting crock.
When those wouldn’t all fit I scrounged up an old tupperware cake carrier that my dinner plates just fit into. This would allow me to keep the olives submerged.
For every gallon of brining water I added 1 cup of cheese salt and 2 cups of apple cider vinegar. I made a small slit in each olive being careful not to cut into the pit and then submerged them into the brine. All in all the twenty pounds of olives took me less then two Blues Clues episodes so it wasn’t as time consuming as I was expecting.
I set aside a small portion of the olives to try an old French recipe. The recipe said to poke each olive with a pin – much faster and safer than cutting the small slit into each one! I placed the olives in a non-metal strainer and then covered them with 4 Tablespoons of cheese salt. Each day I need to check and shake more salt over them if the salt has fallen off. I’ve covered that with a dish towel since the fruit flies in my kitchen love the olives, perhaps even more than my culturing kefir and buttermilk!
These will take from 2 – 4 months to cure. I’m really hoping they turn out because there are certain varieties of olive trees that do well in our Maritime climate and if the olives work out I’d love to get some olive trees for our sunny, arid parking strip come spring.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Sara // Apr 3, 2010 at 1:12 pm
SO how did the olives turn out?
2 admin // Apr 3, 2010 at 1:27 pm
Sara,
They are *almost* done so 2-4 months my eye. But if I had changed the water daily for the first 10 days apparently that would have sped things along. They are still just a tad bitter but definitely taste like olives so I’m in the ballpark at least. In a few weeks (I hope) when they finish I’ll do a wrap up post. I’m just changing the brine right now, you reminded me.
3 louise // Apr 10, 2010 at 10:51 pm
first what is cheese salt? dose it come from cheese? second it sounds great I was about to use a lye recipe but love the sound of a vinegar one more healthy. how was it! also what is a fermenting crock? I don’t think we have those in Australia. thanks so much for you page.
4 admin // Apr 10, 2010 at 11:17 pm
Hi Louise,
cheese salt is like Kosher salt, it dissolves very readily in water but you can use kosher or sea salt also. I would change the water every day for the first 10 days because mine are not quite done and I started them in late October! They take forever this way but they should not take as long if you change the water. I recently saw more info here: http://www.culinate.com/mix/dinner_guest/cure_your_own_olives
Good luck!
5 admin // Apr 10, 2010 at 11:18 pm
ps fermenting crock: http://www.canningpantry.com/harsch-fermenting-crocks.html
6 louise // Apr 22, 2010 at 9:49 am
thanks so much we have our green monzillo olives and chit chatting as we put the cuts in them. looking forward to them now.
7 admin // Apr 22, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Louise – good luck! I wish I had done the change the water daily for 10 days thing the first 10 days to speed it up. I did mine Halloween and here it is mid April and they still aren’t quite done. They are finally palatable but a little bitter. I kinda like them that way but no way would Pickle Man eat them.
8 admin // Jun 16, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Louise – how did yours come out? Mine are *almost* done. They are finally edible but still have a lot of tannins. I doubt I’ll repeat this experiment mostly due to my lack of counter space. Of course I imagine if I had changed the brine more frequently they would have finished much sooner but it was nice being able to forget about them.
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