Food Forest taught me how to dry cure olives and I’ve never looked back. It’s infinitely easier and just as tasty as pickling, in short it’s life changing – here’s how we do it.
You’ll need
- Salt: All recipes we’ve ever seen specify using non-iodized salt, we use coarse rock salt – but I don’t think it actually matters.
- Olives: Only use black, fully ripe olives for this method. For 10kg of olives, you’ll need approximately 5kg of salt.
- A bucket: To put the olives and salt in. We use 10 or 20 litre “food grade” buckets.
Step 1
Pick your olives! Choose only the blackest and leave the green ones on the tree to ripen or use them for pickling. Give them a good wash in fresh water to get any dirt/bird poo off them.Step 2
Get comfy as this step takes a while. You need to break the flesh of each and every olive so it can absorb the salt. If you don’t do this step then it will not work and you’ll cry. Most people recommend using a knife to put a slice in each olive, however we use a fork and prick each olive a few times. This is soooo much quicker than using a knife, plus you can watch a movie at the same time without fear of stabbing yourself. FYI – your fingers will turn a black/purple colour from the olive juices which will take a few days to fade.
A pricked olive!
Step 3
Once all your olives are nicely punctured, pack them in a jar or bucket with salt. We add the olives gradually, mixing in the salt as we go to ensure it’s spread evenly. We then put a thicker layer on top knowing that it will sink down with gravity. Once you’ve done this, either pop a lid on top or some cheesecloth to keep the bugs out and leave it to start doing its thing
Step 4
Check on your olives every few days, they should be literally swimming in their own liquid within one week as seen below. This is a good sign. Strain the liquid off and keep going for another two’ish weeks.
The excess liquid we strained off our olives after one week in salt.
Step 5
Once the liquid has been strained off, make sure the original salt is mixed in evenly and let it continue to do its thing. Some people add in fresh salt at this stage if some of the salt was lost in the straining process. .
Step 6
After three -four weeks your olives should be ready. To test, wash some in fresh water and taste them. Once you’re happy with the taste, rinse the whole lot in fresh water. From here you can either let them dry on some cloth towels and store in a jar or, put them in jars of olive oil with rosemary and garlic – the choice is yours. They’ll taste awesome either way.
What finished dry cured olives look like. Image from here
That’s it folks, you’ll never be scared of preserving olives again!
]]>
Hey Hannah, great read, thanks. I’ve pickled olives before but haven’t tried this method.. Is there anything useful that you do with the strained off water and salt?
No worries Jess. I’m not sure of a good use for the *incredibly* salty water. Let me know if you find one 🙂
Thanks for sharing the recipe. Discarded salt water can be used to kill weeds.
I use excess salt water from olives to brine excess vegetables to store in jars. I have done this with celery, cabbage, and a variety of radishes. It is similar to fermentation style pickling, just a little funkier, and the breakdown of the cellulose structure of the plant happens much faster, so be careful, and eat soon. I also use the liquid or salt from capers in vegetable stock, mashed potatoes and when cooking pasta or grains. It adds such a distinct flavor.
You could evaporate the water out of it and set it aside for the next batch of olives (or sauerkraut or other salted pickle dishes)?
I don’t think so Katkinkate as the water tastes horrible! salty, but also really bitter.
Thank you for a great step-by-step guide on how to cure/dry olives in salt – very helpful! You should consider doing youtube videos also.
Pleasure Shelley. And yes, youtube is on the radar “one day”. Just haven’t quite got there yet :-). Cheers
Thanks for this recipe! I’m going to have so many olives in a month or two, so this will be great. Could you please tell me how long you can store them for? Cheers
We store ours for months/years and just make sure there’s still some salt in the glass jars 🙂
Hi Hannah. Do you add any olive oil to stop the mould? Also wondering if you store in the fridge or pantry. I have so many of them and it’ll take us a very long time to get through them. Cheers, Sonia
We do a similar dry -cure here in Portugal, but the olives and salt are put into a pillowcase and hung in a tree. Give them a bit of a shake each time we pass by for the first couple of weeks to mix up the olives a bit, and 3 – 4 weeks later they are ready. No need to drain off the liquid as it seeps through the pillowcase. Super easy and delicious.
Oh wow Diane – this is awesome information. Thanks for sharing, I’ll be doing that for sure!
Hi Diane, I have the same question for you that I asked of Hannah…
Do you add any olive oil to stop the mould? Also wondering if you store in the fridge or pantry. I have so many of them and it’ll take us a very long time to get through them. Cheers, Sonia
Hi Sonia, we don’t add any olive oil. When we’ve had buckets and buckets of them, we just make sure they’re packed in with salt to preserve them and stop any mould. Cheers 🙂
I’m currently drying some now. Do you have recipes to flavour them at the end please?
We don’t bother flavouring them – instead just keep them in dry salt and add them to dishes as needed. Works for us :-).
I do this but you don’t need to prick the skin at all….the salt draws out the water naturally, by osmosis. Easy peasy!
Even better – thanks Josie!
Have not pricked skin and it has worked. I’ve only done small quantity and put holes in the container so it drains by itself. Still need to shake it up every couple of days.
Great to know Gabriella!
I tried a batch, masses grow wild in my suburb, and hung them in a ham bag. Just shook them up everytime I walked past. They got rained on one or twice but it didn’t seem to matter. I must say I was very nervous about tasting one but it was the most delicious creamy tasting olive I had ever tasted. Salty but so addictive!
That’s awesome Felice! Thanks for sharing sharing :-).
hey champ
Your way of curing is fantastic some years back i came across a version similar to yours but this one was done in a bucket of water for 10 days then flavoured ready to eat on the 11th day unfortunately i’ve lost that recipe.
Thanks for posting
A good tip is to soak a handful in fresh water over night before eating as they can be very salty.
Sure is Gavan 🙂
Can these olives be bottled in a pickle brine and olive oil?
I’ve seen them placed in olive oil after being salted – that worked really well 🙂
Only have a small amount, of two different types but giving it a go, thanks for the info, comments are good to 🙂
Mine are really salty after 3 weeks…and I like salt. Because I didn’t drain? Now looking at how to desalt. Tips welcome!!
Just soak them in a bowl of water overnight 🙂
What type of olives do you use? I want to buy a tree, and I’ve eaten salt cured black olives all my life, but I think we got them from the mission San Juan Batista.
I think all olives would work 🙂
I love the salt cured olives from the shop. They are not salty. But mine are pretty salty using this method ( 3-4 weeks curing )
Soaked overnight in water without much change. What to do ? Need advice. David
What should I do? I dry cured my olives in salt like you described above but I kept the salt dry for about 2 months. The olives are extremely dry and the flesh is stuck to the pit. They are so dry and hard that its very hard to bite off a small piece of flesh. Got any ideas?
Gary
Hello,
I tried dry brining olives for the first time. What temperature is best for them? It’s currently December, I’m in Arizona, and it does get cold here at night–some nights near or below freezing. I’m hesitant to leave them outside because of that. I have 2 jars in the house and one in the garage. Will they still brine if the garage is cold at night and cool during the day, 40-50 degrees? Thank you
Great recipe, will try this year. I have two species: Kalamata and Super Kalamata. Just wondering if it will work with the larger Super Kalamata as well?
I believe so, might just take longer 🙂
Thanks for this technique. We moved pre-Covid into a house with a large olive tree . Last year it didn’t have much fruit . This year it’s loaded . I have read that some species, like some other fruit trees, are biennial . We’ll have masses this year and some will now be salted . Just watching the local birds . Olive trees are feral in our area spread by birds from commercial groves.
If you’re having inconsistent yields it can also be due to weather, which is quite common, but also ‘fruiting stress’. On a super good year, prune off some of the excess fruit so the tree doesn’t go nuts in the current year, and will apparently help it fruit better in the following year.
First year I followed your guidelines 100% and they were great but too salty which was still ok. This year I only had 10% salt and after 2 weeks they now smell of alcohol. Are they ruined? Can I rescue them with lots of salt for a week or shall sun dry them?
Thanks in advance
Manzanillo (Leccino if you don’t have them) is the optimal olive for coarse salt curing. Originally they were in hessian bags hung under trees and dunked in the sea every few days until ready by taste. Just mix them with salt in a bag/pillow slip and hang them in a shaded spot. Rain can help improve the taste and the speed of curing.
They are best kept in the freezer (more than 2 years) in resealable plastic bags – in user amounts that can be transferred to the fridge.
They plump up beautifully in stews, soups and salad dressings. Great just eaten as they are with a splash of good olive oil with some nice cheeses and a chilled Rose or Vermentino.
Regards
Bob
Do you keep them in the freezer in the salt or washed ?
Can I use rock salt?
Hi, I did as directed, but now I have some sort of bug/fly growing inside of the salt jars. What kind of insect could it be, and what should I do about it?
For reference, none of my olives are exposed to air (meaning that all of them are still submerged by dry salt)
I only have a few olives and am curing them in Himalayan salt. I just changed the salt and used the watery left over salt in my bath water, which was great! x