Food I'm Eating: Brining Olives (November 2019)

Olives! For the first time in several years I've been able to get my hands on some healthy, ripe olives for brining. It's a pretty easy process, although a bit tedious at the outset because you have to break the skin of each and every berry. That means scoring each olive with a knife blade before soaking them in brine. I use 1/4 cup of kosher salt to a quart of water and change the brine every two to three days. It takes about six weeks for the bitterness of the just-picked olives to disappear. Towards the end, I add vinegar, garlic, and rosemary to the brine to finish them off. These should be ready for Christmas. I started them on November 10.

Food I'm Eating: Olives 2013--First Batch Finished (March 22, 2013)

I bottled our first batch of 2013 olives the day before yesterday. These are made from our own tree--smaller than those from our neighbor's tree. The larger olives are still a little bitter, so I changed the brine they're in and will give them another week or so. I brined these smaller ones on February 10, so they took about five weeks to make, which seems typical for the smaller variety. I bottled up about six pints. The lemons, wine vinegar, garlic, and herbs I added this year give them quite a nice flavor.

Food I'm Eating: The Olive Project--Herbed Olives

It's been a couple of months since I tried brining olives at home for the first time. It went well and was easy enough that I was inspired to lay down more olives today--about 2,000 more. Our tree is still heavy with fruit even after today's harvest, and the original supply of finished olives is already dwindling.

The fruit is noticeably bigger now. I guess the olives are that much riper than they were back in January. In the meantime, I've been experimenting with different ways to eat the olives I've already made. Tonight I added olive oil, rosemary, raw garlic, and Meyer lemon zest to a bowl of finished olives, and they are very tasty indeed.

My original post on the subject of making olives at home is here: The Olive Project. Also see The Olive Project Continued.