Green Olives – Slit & Pre-Soaked
If you fancy a little bit extra work before your olives go into jars with brine for their final curing, try this method. Not only have you slit the olives to allow the bitterness to leach out more quickly, every time you change the water with this technique, more and more of the bitter component comes out too.
You will need:
- Largish green olives, particularly good if they are the rounded ones. They should be very firm, preferably picked recently. It’s not worth using tiny olives
- Lemon
- Olive oil
- Brine solution: water, cooking salt
- Option to add aromatics such as dried herbs or chilli
Brine Solution Recipe (10%)
For every 1 litre of water, you will need 100g of cooking salt (non-iodised).
Determine the volume of each jar by filling it with water, then measure the capacity. Prepare the solution by calculating 10% of this volume as salt. Add the salt to the required amount of water and stir until completely dissolved. Pour into your jar of olives, ensuring they are fully covered.
Method:
- Cut one or two slits into each olive down the length.
- Place the slit olives in a plastic, glass or ceramic bowl (not metal) and cover with water. Keep submerged by placing a large plate over the top. Add several slices of lemon to acidify the water.
- The next day, drain off this water and re-fill the bowl with fresh water, again adding lemon slices. Repeat this for 10-14 days. (The more times this is repeated, the faster the olives will eventually cure). You can do this twice a day to speed up the process a bit more.
- You will notice the olives losing their characteristic bright green to becoming more ‘olive green’, starting especially at the slits. You can cure them completely until olive green before bottling which may take several weeks of water changes; or bottle them after 10-14 days to continue the curing as well as preserving them.
- When you wish to stop doing the water changes and bottle them, prepare a 10% brine solution (see left). Drain the olives of the water one last time and fill clean, sterilised jars with the olives.
- Add brine solution to fill the jars. Add a fresh slice of lemon to cover the olives, top with olive oil, any aromatics like dried herbs or chilli and seal.
ESTIMATED TIME TO CURE: probably about 6 months less than simple bottling slit olives without pre-soaking.
