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!

The last of the fresh black olives from California were still available this week, so we bought a few cases to cure for the holidays.  These are colossal  Sevillano Olives from Penna (some are almost prune size) and a little banged up, so I’m making them 2 ways.  I’ll put the better olives under a simple brine (sott’acqua) and the olives that are more bruised we’ll dry out (al forno.)

We cured some green olives earlier this year that are ready and they came out great!

What you’ll need:

• a five gallon bucket
• knife
• salt
• crushed red pepper
• fennel seed
• 5-10 whole cloves of garlic
• water

Rinse your olives and then make 3-4 vertical cuts in each olive to quicken the cure process.  Place all the cut olives in a 5 gallon bucket and fill your bucket a little over half way with water. Add almost a full 26oz container of salt, handful of fennel seed (optional as I know fennel is one of those hate it or love it spices) a sprinkle of crushed red pepper and your garlic cloves.  Now you need to weigh the olives down so that they stay submerged in the brine.  We cut another 5 gallon bucket in half and drill holes in the bottom then insert in into the olive bucket and it works well.  You can also use a plate or something of similar size to weight the olives down.  Let them sit for 2-3 weeks and give them a try to see how they’re coming along.  They are usually perfect after about 3-4 weeks but keep them submerged until serving.

I’ll post again on the dried black olives. Enjoy and buon appetito!