First time home curing olives

[etpm]

Not only am I the guy who runs the tractor in my household I am also the cook. I am good at it and my wife is not. Anyway, I just ordered 10 pounds of olives to try making my own olives. I will be using lye to remove the bitterness. For several years I have been wanting to make my own olives and October is the time to buy raw olives. I keep forgetting but this year I remembered. So olives are on their way and I'm excited. Anybody who wants to share a recipe I'm all in. I don't yet know which recipe I'm gonna use. I will be canning the olives that I don't eat right away and I'm wondering how the canning process will change the taste. I will keep everybody up to date on the process and the ultimate results.
Eric

 

[old and tired]

I don't have any recipes but do I sign up for being a taste tester here???

 

[gsganzer]

I don't have any recipes but do I sign up for being a taste tester here???

I'll second this.

 

[Oz_Kioti]

I watched a presentation on commercial olive curing by a South African producer, and used the simplified method for a few buckets-full of our own olives. Essentially it's letting the brine (salt solution) do the de-bittering, and to ensure the olives are kept submerged in the brine. We put a china plate of almost the same diameter of the tub over the olives in the tub, and the weight of the plate keeps the olives down and covered by around 50mm. We used a 10% solution (1 kg salt to 10 litres water), then re-checked to percentage after a couple of weeks and added more salt as required. I use either a home-brewing Specific Gravity tester or a refractometer to measure the percentage.

The pH of the brine will gradually come down to around 3.5 or so (quite acidic) so the presentation I watched said there's no need to rush to add lactic acid, if at all.

The surface of the brine will develop a nasty-looking skin, but this is easily lifted off when it's time to take a reading. Ours have been in this brine for over 12 months, and after rinsing in fresh water, taste great!

Here's a link to another SA procedure which is similar, and also worth a try: https://www.saolive.co.za/table-olive-home-curing/

 

[gsganzer]

My olive oil orders from Oliveoillovers.com arrived the other week. I bought my standard 3L box of Spanish Picual olive oil, that I use for everything in the kitchen that calls for olive oil. This time, I also ordered a bottle of Oleostepa "Estepa Virgen", also Spanish and one of their best oils, and a bottle of Italian first press Nuova (new harvest) and only partially filtered. I love the latter two on baked bread, salad, vegetables and drizzled over baked fish.

Ever since one of our TBN members "Rox", who grew olives in France and won awards with it, turned us on to what a quality olive oil tastes like, I can't buy the mass commercial stuff.

Back in 2022, I hunted for Gredos Ibex in the Gredos mountains in Spain. The next day, we had a wonderful lunch of homemade bread, chorizo and wine in the olive groves at the foothills of the mountains we just hunted. The olives were just weeks away from being picked. Very memorable!