Karina’s Super-Quick Cooking Tip: Curing Olives!
The above is a photo of the olives I bought fresh tonight, from my local Italian fruit shop.
I intend to cure these olives, over a course of less than one week. The way to accomplish this, would be to slit the olives on average of five times for each olive, in order to allow maximum water and salt to penetrate these beauties. Hence, my cooking tip is also a time-saving tip! If you wanted to leave your olives whole while curing them, by all means do so, however, they will take much longer to cure, than they would with my method as per my above photo taken today.
My process of curing olives the quick way, involves a simple process, as follows:
Rinse your olives under fresh, running water, then drain your olives. Place approximately 4-5 slits in each of your olives (4 slits for smaller olives and 5 slits for larger olives). Pour all your olives in your large stainless steel pot. Let your hot water tap run for a few seconds, until its hot enough to fill your stainless steel pot, so that it can cover the olives. Pour your rock salt into this pot, then mix well. Rinse, then replace this water with fresh water and salt daily, for up to one week, or until your olives are to the taste you require (olives should be much less bitter). Please note, you only need to soak your olives in hot water and salt for the first day only. For every other day, up untill one week, you will need to soak your olives in cold water and salt.
Once your olives have been cured over the course of one week or less, via my quick version of curing, you are ready to marinate your beautiful olives! Marinate your olives with whatever recipe you prefer, or simply make your own olive recipe up! You’ll love ‘olive’ ’em anyway 🙂
Have fun in the kitchen!
Karina x
FOOD IS LIFE! 