Green olives at home

Are you lucky enough to have some olive trees? Enjoy your own olives at table!
Once gathered, the operation consists of bathing them to remove the bitterness and to prepare brine for preserving them.

When to pick?
When ripening begins, and your olives begin to take on a yellow hue, open one with a small knife and cut it into quarters like a peach. Press the flesh between your fingers. The juice should be milky. If it is green, wait a little longer. Beware - olives are tough, but they are also fragile! Do not bump them and do not fill your crates too much or they will get squashed.

Tip: use latticed crates to let the air through and store them in a cool place to avoid fermentation.


Curing olives in wood ash.
This is the main operation. If you do not remove the bitterness, then your olives will remain inedible. Several methods are possible, but the ancient method is to use the properties of burnt wood ash to cancel out the acid taste and bitterness.
If you want to remove bitterness from 5 kg of olives, you will need 5 kg of ash. Place your ashes in a pan, cover them with 4 or 5 cm of water and boil for 6 to 8 minutes while stirring. Once cooled and filtered, the bath is ready. Leave your olives in the bath for one week. Stir every day and keep your olives immersed. They are ready once they have become tender and you can remove the stone.
To rinse them, remove the olives and shower them before immersing them in fresh water. Change the water once after a few hours and then once a day for 3 to 5 days depending on the temperature.

Tips:
- Bathe the olives at 18°C. If it is cold, removing the bitterness may take twice as long!
- For the rinsing water, fill the basins with warm water a few hours before plunging your olives into them. The chlorine in tap water will have had time to evaporate.
- Swirl them around with a wooden spoon to avoid bruising.


Brine
Now that your olives are no longer bitter, it is time to put them in brine. Simply diluting salt to 10% (100g of salt per litre of water) is sufficient. You can add perfume to your brine with sprigs of fennel, coriander seeds or other herbs. Prepared in this way, your olives will keep for several months in a cool place in airtight jars.

Tips:
To prepare your brine, dilute the salt in water that is quite hot. The mixture should be perfectly homogenous.
Seal your jars when they reach room temperature before putting them in a cool place and ensure that all of the olives are covered by the brine.




Sources
Interprofessional Olive Association
""Les olives de table"" by Fiorella Cottier-Angeli,
Olivier de provence