[Cooking with Olive Oil] [Tasting Olive Oil] [Recipes]

This is the recipe I use to treat and store freshly harvested olives, which is free of chemicals and uses natural ingredients in the role of preservatives.

Wash your olives with drinkable water and then soak them in a 10% salt 90% water solution. Allow the olives to lose their bitterness, which can take up to 6 months, but sample regularly so when the bitterness is acceptable and the taste to your liking, remove the olives from that salt soaking solution. The process can be expedited by cutting a straight line through each olive with a knife.

Create a new solution with 1 part wine vinegar (to lower the ph) and 3 parts of a 6-8% salt solution. Place olives in glass jars and make sure that the olives are well covered by the 75% salt solution (6%-8% salt) and the 25% wine vinegar mix. Add olive oil on the top to cover the whole mix.

You can be creative with the second mix. Dried basil, oregano, mustard seeds, chili peppers (crushed) and bay leaves could be added. Remember that a lot depends on what type of olive tree is growing in your garden.

Kalamata olives are picked when they turn black (ripened), while other olives are picked when they are green or red (halfway stage).

Some people like to pick their olives in all three stages of ripening (green, red and black), do the initial treatment separately and then store them in the second mix together, thus creating a colorful mix with a variation of tastes.