photo credit: hurricanemaine
Chaffin Family Orchards Challenges Bloggers to Rediscover the Ancient Art of Olive Curing
“I yam what I yam,” said Popeye, the cartoon sailor who graced the TV screen during my childhood. Probably his rationale for some male indiscretion that he had just been accused of, that part I don’t remember. Popeye was the first popular spinach pusher, and while it took me years to stomach spinach, his female sidekick, Olive Oyl had me loving Italian food from a very young age. Which is why I am up for an olive curing challenge!
For as many of my childhood and teen years as I can remember, Spaghetti and Meatballs were my favorite meal. I was of German Irish heritage, yet always celebrated my birthday with a feast of garlic bread, olive oil and tomato sauce, meatballs and a pile of pasta. Today, I shun the stuff as a low carb, nightshade avoider. But Olive Oyl and her skinny physique and olive pointed elbows came back to mind recently and brought back those wonderful memories of Italian abandon.
It all started with a blogger challenge thrown down by Chaffin Family Orchard to the Realfoodmedia.com bloggers. We are a group of 7 traditional food bloggers around the country, and we blog our hearts out about the dietary wisdom of Weston A. Price. The owner of Chaffin, Chris Kerston has noticed something about us radical food fermenters. None of us seem to know a thing about curing olives.
20 lbs of Olives, Yikes! Now What Do I Do?
The Olive Oyl Experiment
Since Chaffin is an olive grower, he has shipped each of us 20 lbs of olives and dared us to dive in to learn the ancient art of olive curing!
There are a number of methods, and since this is a ton of olives I am going to try several different curing methods, to see which work for an Irish lass who looks a lot like a blonde Olive Oyl these days. I am tall and skinny in part due to my deficient modern diet when I was young (the tall part) and in part due to the health kick I have been on for 5 years which has trimmed me down from a size 12 to a size 6.
I yam what I yam, a German Irish lass with a penchant for Italian eats, and luckily olives are still on my good list! So, this could be a bonanza for us, as, after I cure the olives, I plan to experiment with different seasonings and spices as the next step.
First Method–Water Cured Olives
Filtered Tap Water and a Stock Pot for Curing
For this, I am using filtered municipal water. We have a whole house water filter and a reverse osmosis filter at the kitchen sink. I am going to see if this ultra filtered water will work for curing olives. The Wikihow recipe I am using calls for breaking the olives with a wooden mallet, so I am using my trusty kraut pounder (as any good German would do).
The curing vessel I have chosen is my All Clad stock pot.
Kraut Pounder Used for Whacking Olives to Break the Skin
I am having trouble with the technique, either I am only bruising the olive and not breaking the skin, or I am getting multiple fractures in the skin, or I am cracking the darn things in half, and only the stem is keeping them intact. In fact, they look like little pac men or Audrey II babies (the flesh eating vegetable of Little Shop of Horrors fame), where the pit is the tonque hanging out of the olive. YIKES. But I have noticed there is a definite ring to the perfect WHACK. Given enough time and olives, I think I could achieve olive busting mastery.
Nitey Nite Olive Audrey II Babies!
The recipe says to weigh the olives down so as to keep them all underwater. Try as I might, nothing in my kitchen would fit inside this pot. So, I abandoned the olives to sink or swim. The next morning, I noticed all the brown spots on olives exposed to the air. So I made them a wet blanket of cheesecloth. Hoping that solves that problem, but we will see.
So, now on to the next method.
Second Method–Salt Cure Olives
Using Kitchen Shears
For this method, I am using a rustic girls recipe, which calls for slicing the olive skin vertically. I tried both kitchen shears and a knive for this approach. The kitchen shears seemed great for a while, but repetitive motion injury seemed to be approaching, so I switched to the knife for the other half of the olives. It was quicker and seemed to not be as stressful on my hand.
Kitchen Knife is Ideal
The curing vessel I chose for this experiment is my large crockery bread bowl. Don’t try and find this bowl, as the company is now out of business, as home bread making seems to be a dying art. By the way, if you know of any company on earth that still makes this kind of bowl, my Mommie wants one. Do Tell, in the comments below!
This time, I am using spring water, which is delivered to our home in 5 gallon jars. We are hedging our bets in this household, since no matter how much research we do, we can’t seem to find a final answer to the question, “what water is safe to drink?” So, half the time I use my ultra filtered tap water, the rest of the time I use the spring water. If you know the definitive answer to this question, please throw it in the comments below!
Bread Bowl and Dinner Plate Work Great
I used my same wet blanket method the first day, and this morning added a dinner plate on top, because (delayed intelligence) I realized this bowl was wider and I did have something that would fit the bill for weighing the olives down and keeping them underwater.
Just shows you the importance of taking inventory of ingredients and utensils before you embark upon a new recipe. Being a creative type, I just don’t do that very well, so learn from my impulsiveness!
Third Method–Composting Olives
I have 1/3 of the box of olives left, and want to do the composting method. I have an email in to a guy that knows how to do this if he responds, I will employ his secrets, otherwise your intrepid Olive Oyl is going to wing it. I plan to use my ceramic crock pot for the curing vessel.
Olives Ship with some Cute Little Anomolies!
Pray you guys that he writes me back, or this might be an odorific disaster. My Popeye might banish me and my olives to the bilge!
If you would like to join the Olive Oyl Experiment, visit Cheeseslave blog’s resource page and order some olives. Scroll way down the page. Under Fruits and Vegetables you’ll see the hyperlink to Chaffin Family Orchards. Click on it to go straight to the actual grower of these green goodies! The cost is approximately $35.00 for 2o lbs, including shipping.
Please let me know how you are doing with your olives by submitting your blog posts to HartkeisOnline.com, or comment on any of my Olive Oyl Experiment blog posts. Bloggers, we will add your links to my posts, just like a blog carnival! It will be loads of fun! And, 20 lbs of olives will be enough to make lots of hostess or holiday gifts, a great way to share your penchant for traditional foods with others!
Remember, us shipmates are all in this together! Let’s keep traditional food culture afloat by learning more about where olives come from and what to do with them to turn them into delicious food!
By the way, in your box of olives you will find some olives that have already shriveled and dried, a few leaves and even some colorful olives with magenta spots. I found it fascinating. I am also wondering if these anomolies will be useful in the composting method…STAY TUNED for more Olive Oyl Experiment posts!
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9 Comments
Okay, REALLY dumb question. I’ve only ever bought canned olives already cured, so I’m clueless. These olives are all green. When they are done curing, will they still be green – like the kind you stuff pimientos into? Or will they turn black? Or is the black kind a different variety altogether? I need to learn how to make the black kind, especially if they are as inexpensive as the green ones. We buy a lot of olives!
Local Nourishment´s last blog ..Don’t spare the butter!
I am too new at this to know, but this is something Chris of Chaffin sent me in an email:
Chris wrote:
“Also as kind of a fun fact all store bought canned olives are green olives. If you buy a can of black olives they were force oxidized to turn them black. My understanding of this process is that it’s basically like a big hose that bubbles in the vat of curing olives, kind of like a fish tank. Though I did see some reports online that things like manganese were also used to assist the process.”
That still doesn’t tell us if there is such a thing as a real black olive. From what I can tell, these light green olives are turning olive green, after just a few days in the curing vessels.
Does anyone else know are black olives a variety or does it have to do with ripeness or method of curing??
I had heard that black olives are the ripe stage of olive. Wikipedia backs me up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive
I would love to know how the unripe olives have become so favored for eating, and why canners choose to chemically “ripen” olives rather than order ones already black. I’ve never liked the pickled green kind with the pimentos in them, preferring the canned black ones instead.
So are you trying to brine them natually or are you lacto-fermenting them? Maybe you said it, but I didn’t catch the purpose here…
I just got my olives, and am getting up the nerve to embark on the curing journey. I see all these delicous “gourmet olive bars” at my HFS, and thought it would be nice to have my own stash! I will keep you posted!
Carrie (Organic and Thrifty)´s last blog ..Transitioning a Child to a Gluten Free/Sugar Free Diet
I can personally attest to the fact that there is such a thing as a ripe black olive. I grew up in California with a “gleaning” dad who was always scoping out unpicked fruit trees in the neighborhood. One day I jumped at his offer, coming in the door, of a black olive to whoever wanted it (black olives did not fit in our food budget, but I LOVED them). I will never forget the awful bitter taste of that purplish juicy piece of fruit that looked so tempting at first. I guess Dad thought it would provide some educational amusement!
This should be interesting. For years I have wanted to make my own olive oil. I finally find a company that makes a home olive oil press. Now I need to learn about the curing. Thanks for this post!
Michael
Michael´s last blog ..Does High-Fructose Corn Syrup Have To Be In Everything?
A little off topic, but you said:
I am tall and skinny in part due to my deficient modern diet when I was young (the tall part) and in part due to the health kick I have been on for 5 years which has trimmed me down from a size 12 to a size 6.
Is being tall the result of an unhealthy diet? I had always correlated being tall with being healthy. Do you have any other information I could read about this?
Ben´s last blog ..A new theme and new links
Hi Ben, I am not only tall, but very narrow in the face, shoulders and hips, which Dr. Weston A. Price discovered a body structure that is narrow is a result of lack nutrients. You are right, being tall in itself is not a problem, it is being narrow AND tall. My jaw is extremely narrow, as well, the dentist always remarks on that, and it is why I had to have braces as a child! It’s referred to in the following article as the Ichabod Crane syndrome, here is the article that explains what I am talking about.
http://dev.westonaprice.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=27
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