Home-cured olives – seasoned with chilies, lemon and North African spices – have finally made their way into our kitchen, and happily so. Not too long ago, we received a beautiful box of freshly harvested, green-ripe barouni olives from Chaffin Family Orchards out of California. Since then we’ve patiently waited and waited for our olives to lose their soapy bitterness and gain a saltiness spiked by hot peppers, lemon and garlic.
Olives are among our favorite foods. They enjoy a rich heritage having been cultivated across the middle east and Mediterranean region for thousands of years. Though olive oil has always been prized both for grooming and culinary uses, my love rests with the well-spiced and wonderfully salty fruit. Olives are rich in mono-unsaturated fat, vitamin E and polyphenols which account for the fruit’s strong, bitter flavor. A good soaking in brine and spices tempers the olive’s natural bitterness.
In preparing my batch of olives at home, I chose to water cure them – as it’s a relatively faster approach to olive curing and, as you can imagine, I was eager to see the results of my first adventures in olive curing. Other methods of curing olives at home include treating the fruit with lye, brining them whole and curing them in salt. I imagine, next season, we’ll try a different method of curing olives. Water curing is simple and remarkably easy; just clean the olives, discarding any marred fruit, and pound them with a mallet or rolling pin until the fruit is slightly bruised. Over a period of days or even weeks, depending on how much bitterness you prefer, soak them in clean water, changing it frequently. You’ll notice that the olives will release some of their oils and that oil will rise to the top of the water every day. Follow this by a heavily spiced brine, and you have home-cured olives.
We’re looking forward to serving our olives at the Thanksgiving table and throughout the year as appetizers or in lovely, rustic tapenades. Some we seasoned with provincial herbs, others with Greek oregano and garlic, but these olives we seasoned with a savory array of North African spices. I can’t wait to pair them with a Moroccan-spiced Roast Chicken or on fresh bread smeared with authentic labneh and a slice of preserved lemon.
Cracked Olives: Moroccan Style
Fresh olives are sold in bulk at very affordable prices. While this recipe only makes use of a ½ gallon of olives, take advantage of larger quantities and spice them differently in order to vary the flavors in your kitchen. Incidentally, the water-curing method for preparing olives results in more oleuropein – an antioxidant thought to boost the immune system – in the end product which is, in part, why we chose this method.
Ingredients for Home-cured, Cracked Olives
- ½ Gallon Fresh Green-ripe Olives
- 1 Whole Preserved Lemon OR 1 Whole Lemon, quartered
- 1 Small Bulb Garlic, Peeled
- 3 – 4 Fresh Red Chili Peppers
- 1 Bay Leaf
- 1 Teaspoon Peppercorns
- 1 Thin Slice Fresh Turmeric, juliennedOR ¼ Teaspoon Ground Turmeric
- 1 Thin Slice Fresh Ginger, julienned
- ½ Teaspoon Coriander Seeds
- 6 Tablespoons Unrefined Salt
- ¼ Cup Raw Vinegar
Instructions for Home-curing and Seasoning Cracked Olives
- Rinse clean and pick over the fresh olives, discarding any obviously marred fruit. Discard any leaves or stems.
- Gently hit each olive with a rolling pin in order to bruise it. The olives may crack, and they’ll most likely spit out some foamy white juice. Eventually your fingertips will turn black as the olive’s juice oxidize.
- Once all the olives have been cracked, pour them into a container and fill it with filtered water. Drain, rinse and fill the olive container with water again twice a day for at least a week, and up to a month. We cured ours in this manner for two weeks. You may taste them for bitterness throughout the process.
- Once the olives have lost much of their bitterness – they’ll still retain quite a bit – drain and rinse them a final time.
- Place them into a ½-gallon mason jar with spices, garlic, lemon and chilies.
- Pour raw vinegar over the olives.
- In a separate container, prepare a brine of 6 tablespoons unrefined sea salt to 1/2 gallon filtered water and pour over the olives and spices.
- Shake well to combine ingredients.
- Allow the mixture to ferment for at least ten days or until done to your liking.
I was SO glad to see this post! About a year ago we planted an olive tree in our front garden. Not only is it a lovely landscape tree in our Southern California garden, but I hope to eventually harvest olives for my family’s use. Right now the tree is young and getting established in it’s new site, so it’s putting out new growth, not fruit.
I grew addicted to olives when I studied abroad in Tunisia, but the good ones at the grocery store are so expensive. I never would have thought of curing my own. Thank you for the inspiration!
Jenny,
You must be proud of all your hard work to be finally eating your rewards. Congratulations!
I’m so envious. I love olives, too! Any chance of sending me a taste?
Marly -
I’ll be happy to send you a batch – we have several gallons of the Moroccan style olives. Just be aware that my kitchen is NOT a commercial kitchen. Email me your address, and I’ll send some off if you’re really interested!
Take Care -
Jenny
I’m so happy I ran across your olive receipe! The ones I’ve read use lye! so it’s nice to see one that’s natural and not so difficult. Thanks! Oh and if you happen to have any olives left, I loved to try them.
Cheers
YAY! I was so looking forward to this post, Jenny! Your olives look fabulous! I love all the flavors you used.
On another note, I had a good time, reading your blog as one of the Nominees in the Foodbuzz Food Blogger Awards this past weekend!
so I am curing mine according to the sicilian method – in vinegar brine and they were looking great but when I went to check on them today they are getting black in spots! Did that happen to yours? I have some in the harsch so no air at all and some are in a stone crock submerged but not as effectively. Derp!
So… how did the olvies turn out? I have a Barouni olive tree and would like to cure the olives this year. My tree has given a good yield of fruit the last two years and I’ve had to throw them out due to lack of finding anyone to cure them. I don’t a cook so this will be a chanllenge for me, i.e. kitchen terminology. Where in California are you located? Thanks for listenting.
Jenny,
Yummy! These look incredible. I remember reading a post about the organically grown olives last fall, but when we tried to order them they were out of stock.
When is olive season? I’d love to order some.
Do you know how commercial olives fall on the food safety issue? I don’t really trust the curing process…sound of lye in my food concerns me. I wouldn’t mind paying for safe cured olives if I knew which ones were actually safe to feed my family. Perhaps a topic for discussion?
Thanks, I love your blog
I cure olives every year, and it’s one of the simplest and most rewarding of the ‘projects’ I have on the go.
I’m so glad you had a great experience. It’s simple, like you say, anyone can do it!
Cheers, and thank you for sharing great food!
I’m trying to get to that yummy looking recipe for Red Chili Pork with the Pineapple Salsa, and I keep getting kicked into this olive recipe….not that the olives don’t look amazing too!