Pick and cure your own foraged olives, the traditional Sicilian way

Learning how to cure olives is truly so easy — and you might even be able to forage and pick them free from a street near you.

Because olives grow abundantly in so many cities (they’re often considered an environmental weed in southern Australia), yet often go unpicked. Why not go for a walk, find a tree in your neighbourhood and give it a go?

I’ve been curing olives from a foraged harvest since 2017.

Three large trees grow on a suburban street verge five minutes from my Adelaide home and, come early autumn, they’re usually laden with fruit.

Some still-warm day, I rope a (somewhat begrudging) group of mates into picking literal bucketloads, so we have olives coming out of our ears when they’re ready a few months later … which is OK by me. Home-cured olives are delicious and a jar or two makes for a brilliant last-minute homemade gift.

I use an old Sicilian-style recipe for curing olives, which requires just two steps.

• Step 1: Soak fresh olives in water for about two weeks (changing the water every day).
• Step 2: Cure olives in a strong salt brine. They need a couple of months in the brine before eating, then keep for at least a year (often longer) in that same brine.

I reckon this way is much better than preserving olives recipes that call for daily brine changes for the first fortnight, which leaves you with salty wastewater to dispose of. This way, the daily rainwater can just be poured straight onto your thirsty summer garden.

I often field lots of questions about preserving olives the Italian way, so I’ve documented the full curing olives process in detail below.

This is a traditional Sicilian olives recipe, as shared with me by a Sicilian family.

How to cure olives, the traditional Italian way

Ingredients

• Fresh-picked green or purple olives (extra points if they’re foraged)
• Unprocessed salt — rock salt or sea salt is best
• Rainwater or unchlorinated water
• A little olive oil (optional)
• Vinegar (optional)

*A quick note on how to tell when olives are ready to be picked

Late summer to mid-autumn is generally the olive-picking season here in southern Australia; they’re usually ready sometime between February and April.

You can pick olives while green or wait a little longer until they ripen further and turn purple, it’s up to you. I prefer the taste of green olives, so I keep an eye on the tree – when the first few olives start to turn purple, the whole tree is ready to be picked.

If you prefer eating black olives, you can also wait a little longer until most of the olives on the tree have turned purple. It’s totally up to your own personal preference.

Step 1: Soak olives in water for two weeks

Find a tree or three and wait until the fruit ripens to your preferred level (green or purple). Gather some friends and pick the olives, avoiding taking too much stem. Place them gently into your picking buckets to avoid bruising the fruit.

Back at home, place the olives into a container large enough to hold them all. (Pro tip: use a cooler box with a plug at the bottom, as it will be much easier to drain off the water each day.)

Fill the container with rainwater so all olives are covered; they might float, but that’s OK. 

Change the water every day for at least 12 days. If your olives are larger, they’ll benefit from longer – up to 15 days.

This starts to release the bitterness. You will see, day by day, that the olives release more of a foamy, slimy texture (delicious, right?), caused by the bitterness and also a little of the oil content. So after draining out yesterday’s water, given them a little rinse before refilling. This is especially important in the last few days. 

On the final day, drain and thoroughly rinse the olives.

Step 2: Cure olives in a saltwater brine

Now it’s time to cure the olives by soaking them in a saltwater brine for several months.

Choose a container: Find a food-grade container or bucket/s with lids, large enough to hold all your olives – plenty of businesses give these away for free.

Make a 10% brine solution: The brine is made using a 10:1 ratio — 10 parts water to 1 part salt. That means for every 1 litre of water, you’ll need 100g of salt.

Calculating how much brine you need to preserve olives

As a rough guide, olives and brine should be in a 3:1 ratio. So, for every full bucket of olives, you’ll need about a third of a bucket of brine.

Here’s the easiest way to measure and mix enough brine:

• Fill the bucket with water using a kettle or measuring jug until all the olives are completely covered. Keep track of how many litres you’ve added.
• Multiply the total litres by 100 to calculate how much salt you’ll need (eg: 5 litres of water = 500g salt).
• Remove a few litres of the water, heat it on the stove, and stir in the salt until dissolved.
• Let it cool completely, then return it to the bucket and stir well to combine.

Pro tip: Cover the olives with a thin layer of olive oil, or lay a large plate on top of them (inside the bucket) to push them all under the salty brine.

This prevents air from touching the fruit, which helps to prevent creamy-white Kahm yeast from growing on the surface. You may still get some Kahm yeast (you can see a bit in the photo above) and this is totally OK as long as you don’t see any actual mould – just rinse off the olives and they’ll be fine to eat. 

Place the lid on the bucket and leave the olives in the brine for at least three months, in a cool and dark place.

Taste your curing olives at the three-month mark:

• If they’re hard and you’d prefer them softer, leave for a little longer.
• If they’re too salty, you can pour out a little brine and dilute with rainwater to make it less salty.
• You can also add 10% vinegar to the brine for a little more flavour and to help preserve your olives, but this is not essential.

How to cure olives: storing your harvest

Your cured olives in brine will keep for at least a year, often longer.

I keep everything in the large bucket and spoon them out into smaller jars as needed – I always have a huge jar for myself in my pantry and often give smaller jars away to friends.

When spooning into smaller jars, pour brine from the bucket into the jar until the olives are completely covered, to ensure they’ll keep for months.

And as you’re removing olives from the big bucket, check the olive oil layer and top up if necessary – this will help them keep for longer. 

Adding flavours to your cured olives

Once your olives are fully cured, there are two ways to add yum flavours using herbs and spices.

Infusion

You can split some olives into a smaller jar and add things to the brine, such as dried and crushed chillies, bay leaves, fennel seeds, vinegar, etc. Leave to sit for a couple of weeks and the flavour will gently infuse. 

Frying

Alternatively, you can quickly jazz them up just before eating by heating a little oil in a pan, adding things like garlic and spices, and gently frying for a few minutes. They’re especially delicious served warm.

Or just eat them exactly as is. They’re great straight out of the jar too.

So, now you know how to cure olives, it’s time to hop to it — find a tree near your place and get a’picking. Let me know how you go?

⠀

Extra reading:

If you have a lot of salt lying around, and the olives you’ve harvested are on the smaller side, you might like to try this dry-salted preserved olives recipe from Milkwood.