Kalamata Olives - Brine Cure

Check over the olives and throw away any bruised or rotten ones. (It only needs one needs one bruised olive in the storage jar to bring disaster). Start the curing process on the same day as you have picked the olives.

My inexperience means I cannot tell what is a bad bruise. Just a soft spot? To deal with this I graded the olives (>5kg from Paul's tree in early May, 2014) and cured them in 2 batches. The smaller batch for any doubtful ones. When bottling and storing I expect to be able to grade again - like with like as they are changing colour at quite different rates during the curing process. Brine made from 3.6L of water and 400g salt was sufficient for the 5.5kg of olives I had.

The Fermented Brine Cure

from "Six ways to Cure an Olive"

Curing Method

  1. Make a brine with 4Tablespoons of pickling salt to 1200ml of water. Leave to cool if made by boiling in a pan. (Not sure if boiling is necessary.)
  2. With a sharp knife slash each olive deeply one one side.
  3. Place the olives in a large glazed stoneware, earthenware, glass or porcelain container. (what about plastic? definately not metal.)
  4. Cover the olives completely with the brine. Weight them down with a piece of scoured wood, or a plastic bag filled with water, making sure they are all completely submerged.
  5. Store in a cool place
  6. Change the brine solution once a week for three weeks
  7. If a pinky-white scum forms on the surface during that time, rejoice. A lactic acid fermentation is taking place - harmless and part of the process. Disregard it until it is time to change the brine. Then rinse the olives with fresh water before covering them with the new brine. The scum will form again until the cure is done.
  8. At the end of the three weeks taste one of the largest olives. It should be just slightly bitter for the best effect. If not ready cover with brine again for another week.
  9. When ready, pour off the brine and rinse the olives, ready for storage.
I ended up using a 10% brine solution, and only changing it once every 3 weeks or so as the process was happening in plastic tubs in our rather cool Canberra laundry so was very slow. After 2 to 3 months I changed to fresh water and started to bottle the olives.

Storage Marinade This is the first one I tried. It is a bit too strongly vinegar

  1. 1 Tablespoon pickling salt
  2. 2 cups water
  3. 1.5 cups white wine vinegar
  4. 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
  5. 3 wedges lemon
  6. 2 cloves garlic
Next variant:
  1 l water    :  66 g salt  :  70 ml vinegar. 
500 ml water   :  33 g salt  :  30 ml vinegar.
4.5 l water    : 300 g salt  : 250 ml brown grape vinegar.


Add rosemary and chillies.

Garlic and Lemon and oregano
Storage Method
  1. Cover the olives with the marinade
  2. Float a layer of olive oil on the surface to seal it
  3. Store in the fridge and use olives as needed.

Variations

I swapped to using plastic buckets and 10% brine solution for the second week of curing. 10% brine is 100g salt to 900ml of water, which slightly more salt to water than the 4T to 1200ml of water of the above. This was as a result of reading the web document http://www.portion36.co.za/Portion%2036%20Kalamata%20Guide%20reduced%20size.pdf

TEMPERATURE:
Because the curing is a fermentation process you do not want to put the olives in too cold a place, like in the fridge. Normal room temperature is fine.

TIPS:
Put your olives in orange net bags, they come in rolls that you can buy at any shop that sells plastic goods like Plastic Warehouse for instance. Then the olives are easy to handle and submerge in the brine. Put a lid on your container to keep dust out. Do NOT seal the container - gas is produced during the fermentation. We believe that this curing method is both efficient and make flavourful olives.

Curing Challenges

Because the olives are cured in a strong salt solution, it can be difficult to taste the flavours and how debittered the olive is. One has to allow for some saltiness when tasting. When the olives are bottled later the salt is extracted to a large extent. (You can also leave them in fresh water overnight before bottling to extract some of the salt.)

From there on you need not do much but wait – unless you are impatient. Depending on volume, if you do nothing, this process can take 12 months. But you can also change the brine after a few weeks to speed up the process. You just pour off the brine and make a new identical solution to replace it.

We recommend that you do not do this too often, you do not want to create too much salt waste and it also affects the flavour of the end product. If you change the brine the process will be faster but the brine you pour off contains fermenting substances that you want the olives to absorb since they add flavours and you will lose those in the process. But experiment - make a few smaller containers and you can leave some untouched whilst you speed up the fermentation in some by changing the brine.

Don't panic when

... your beautiful black Kalamatas lose their colour in the brine and become all shades of brown, maroon, beige... this is natural. If you want your olives darker again you can just expose them to air for up to 24 hours before bottling them. Put the olives in a bottle and wait some hours before pouring the brine.

... there is a white film or mould on the surface of your brine. It is natural. You can remove it or leave it – it is part of the fermentation process and should smell of that as well.

... when you tasted so many olives and its been so many weeks – and they are still bitter. Hang in there. Change the brine and we promise, it will de-bitter sooner or later. The time it takes depends on the size and ripeness of the olive, and of course your personal preference.

To Cut ... or Not to Cut ...

Many people cut or prick their olives before curing. This is to make the bitter oleuropein leak our easier. We prefer not to do this, and it is not only because it is
A LOT OF WORK...

It is our experience that although the cut may serve well to extract the bitterness, it leaves the olive flesh around the cut exposed. It will naturally be able to absorb more liquid (water and later often vinegar used for preservation). Our cut olives have more quickly become soft and kept the flavours for shorter period of time than uncut olives. But again – it is a tradeoff. Maybe if you want your olives debittered quickly and intend to eat them very fast, this is a method that works well for you. This is often the case in home pickling and you will find that many of our recipes cure the olives rather fast. In the end it is up to you, dear Kalamata lover, - to cut or not to cut - that is the question...

BOTTLING Kalamata Olives

Finally, the day comes and once you decide your Kalamatas have de-bittered it is time to bottle them and this is now the fun part and where you can create your own, unique table olives. There are a thousand ways, but just a few basics. First of all, we remove the olives from the strong salt brine and leave them in fresh water overnight. This especially applies when you have cured in a 10% salt brine as we do. The next day we take the olives out and but them in bottles that have been sterilized.

BRINE for BOTTLing TIP:
You can sterilize your bottles in the dishwasher – or in the microwave.

Then you need to make a brine and the question is what to bottle in – water, salt, vinegar, oil... We bottle our olives in weak salt brine, around 3%. You will see in the recipes that there are many other combinations. 30 g salt to 970 g water for example if you want a 3% salt solution. We do not use vinegar or any other preservatives. An olive that is fully fermented has a natural preservative - lactic acid - and does not really need any other preservative.

Challenge: This method makes a rather fresh product and you need to think for how long you want to be able to keep your olives. Theoretically olives can be kept for up to 4 years. We think that our Kalamatas should be consumed between the harvests.

It is our experience that our olives will keep for a year in the fridge unopened in the weak salt brine, but they lose some of their flavour. If bottled in vinegar on the other hand, the olives will with time absorb more and more of the vinegar and we find that they can become very acidic and taste more vinegar than olive. If you want to bottle with vinegar you can choose a lighter or heavier solution - anything up to 50% can be used. With a strong vinegar the olives clearly will preserve longer but the trade off is a more acidic olive.

Recipes

Brown Grape Vinegar Olives

Mustard Kalamatas

No effort olives

Rosemary and Lemon Kalamatas

Kalamatas in Rosemary and Vinegar

Kalamatas a la die burger

Portion 36 Olive Orchard’s natural Kalamatas