In my last post on curing black olives I mentioned that I was making them 2 ways: sott’acqua (in a simple brine of salt and water) and al forno (oven dried black olives.) The black olives “sott’acqua” don’t take much maintenance… once you make your brine and drop them in it’s a waiting game. The dried black olives however, are more involved.
The olives we had were late season olives and were a little banged up so I separated the ones that were really bruised to use for drying.
Here’s what you need to do: Take your olives and place them in a large bowl with a lid. Sprinkle salt over the olives (I used an entire 26 oz pack of salt) and cover them. You do not need to refrigerate them. Mix your olives twice a day for 2-3 weeks. Water from the olives will start to collect at the bottom of your bowl but don’t remove it… just keep mixing them twice a day. After a few weeks, you will have mushy looking olives in water and you’ll know they’re ready (I kept them in the bowl for 3 weeks.) Drain the water from your bowl and rinse your olives several times to remove the excess salt (otherwise they will be too salty.) Once you have rinsed your olives, lay them on paper towel in a baking tray or cookie sheet and turn your oven on to 125 degrees F (50 C) Place your olives in the oven for several hours and check them periodically until your satisfied with how dry your olives are. This method can take up to 12 hours to dry them out, so you might want to consider leaving them in your oven overnight. The key is to expose your olives to low heat over time so that they can dry out slowly. Another variation is to preheat your oven to 200 degrees F (95 C) and once your oven is preheated, turn it off and put your olives in… that way you can leave the house and not have to worry about the oven being on. You can repeat this process over several days as I did.
Once you have your olives at a level of dryness that you like and they have cooled, place them in a bowl, add a splash of olive oil, oregano, crushed red pepper and mix. They’re ready to serve. They also freeze very well. Enjoy and buon appetito!
I love oil cured black olives.
I love the sun and salt dried olives, look and taste similar to these. They are salted and squeezed of their liquid, cured if you will.
The result is a briny, meaty olive I adore.
Keep on sharing these family gems.
I don’t know too many people who do this, but it’s so great that you are maintaining these family traditions Joe.
Those look mighty tasty, Joe!
I havce never done this – but am now compelled to – I just need a large quantity of olives. Oh for an olive grove!
These look delicious. I love cured olives, especially if they’re tossed with red pepper flakes, fennel seeds and orange zest!
DeeeLishus!
Wow, this is an interesting process
The olives sure look yummie!
Great job Joe!! I love olive and you make them look so good!
HI Joe, We market dehydrators and this would be a great recipe for drying olives. You mention the quantity of salt as being 26oz but don’t say what quantity of olives you process with this amount of salt. Looking forward to some feedback from you.