22 October 2009

Olive Adventure Part One

A few weeks ago, I picked up some fresh, organic olives from a local farm.

Their minimum purchase requirement? Twenty five pounds.  So now I have twenty five pounds of olives curing in my living room.


The process:
I had to process these over two nights. It took about two hours each night. I cut two slits on each olive, then lightly beat them with a rolling pin. After I had done that, I threw them in a 2.5 gallon glass jar and filled it with water.

After an hour of beating and stabbing olives:



Two hours in:

 

After about two weeks of sitting in plain water, on Tuesday, I changed it to brine (2/3C salt to 4C - 1quart - water).

Next week, I will be putting them in quart jars filled with olive oil, orange peel, garlic, peppercorns, dried chili peppers, fresh oregano, rosemary and some red wine vinegar.

Then, I will let them ferment for about ten days, and I happily be eating home-cured olives. . . . and probably giving them to everyone for Christmas.

I will post more after I've put them into individual jars.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

YUM!! I'm waiting for my olive tree to grow up a bit and grow olives :-)

Kelly said...

This is the first time I've ever had the chance to make them myself. I live in a great area for olives, but never found anybody who grows them locally before this year (I lucked out, not only are they local, they're also organic!)

customdesigns4ubynan said...

my goodness what a lot of work. I had no idea it was so involved and required so much time. Very interesting, I learned something new.