Table Olives – Salt Cured (part 2)

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Thursday 04 December, 2014 by Uncle Spike

In a previous post, we got as far as preparing table olives by layering them with salt in a large tub or in a rice sack. Now we continue the process….

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Ok, after about ten days, or half way through, you’ll note that the olives appear wet; this is due to the bitter water being drawn out by the salt, hence the sack is constantly dripping out bitter water, or when using the tub method, the water collects and is drained out by hand each day.

Also, note how the colours have all changed,i from bright green or purple, to an almost even dark brown colour.

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And another ten days later (total 20), they are ‘done’. As with most of these processes, the only reliable test is to rinse one and do a taste-test. Yep, lovely.

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Still heavily salt covered, and wet, I leave them outside for an hour and then, taking two rounds at it, the excess salts are shaken off using a salad strainer held over the side of the balcony – works a treat!

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This is the result, with salts cleaned off.

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We then finish it off by adding a cup of sunflower oil, and a few rocks of lemon salt. The olives are therefore ‘oil coated’, but no more than that (no brine water or litres of olive oil required for this method).

I then turn the barrel twice a day for another one week to ensure all the olives are evenly covered. By the way, if we used just a cup of olive oil, the fruit goes mouldy (white tips at the stalk end), hence we use sunflower oil (or similar ‘light oil’).

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And voilà – here’s the final product 🙂

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