It’s impossible to pick olives in rain, wind, or fog for many reasons: besides the obvious dangers and difficulties of climbing trees and ladders in wind and rain, moisture can cause the olives to spoil in their crates before they are taken to the mill, or frantoio, for pressing.
When should olives be picked?
Most olives are ready to harvest when the juice turns cloudy, at the “green ripe” stage in late September. They ripen to an uneven reddish-brown through November, finally darkening to the “naturally black ripe” stage by early December.
How long can olives sit before pressing?
You must utilize the olives within three days of harvest. If they sit any longer, the olives will oxidize and “sour.” So, if you have a lot of olives, you may want to enlist some olive picking friends and allot a whole day.
Can you pick olives when they are green?
The key to the olive flavor, color, and texture is the moment of harvest. Fruit can be harvested when it is green and unripe, fully ripened to black, or any stage in between. Older olive fruit can be salt-cured or dry cured to produce a salty, wrinkled product.
Can you pick olives off the tree and eat them?
Olives are delicious fruit that can be collected from trees or bushes. Typically harvested in the late summer, freshly picked olives have a bitter taste at first. Traditionally, olives are cured in a brine, or a solution of salt and water, to remove their bitterness.
Why do they harvest olives at night?
The birds roost in the trees during the night, and that’s precisely when the olives are harvested. Olives apparently taste better when harvested at night because the cooler temperatures allow for better retention of aromatic compounds.
Can olives be too ripe?
Over-ripe olives (very soft, completely purple flesh) will yield far more oil; the oil will have little or no bitterness and will often exhibit tropical fruit aromas. Compared to oil from unripe olives, oil from over-ripe olives will have a much reduced shelf life (months rather than years).
How do you prepare olives straight from the tree?
Olives picked off the tree contain a very bitter compound called oleuropein. Harvested olives must be “cured” to remove the bitterness in order to make them palatable. The most common curing processes use brine, dry salt, water, or lye treatments.
How do you prepare olives after picking from a tree?
How To Cure Olives At Home
- Place your picked olives in a food grade container.
- Pour your brine over the olives to cover.
- Loosely seal a lid over the container and place in your pantry.
- Leave the olives for 3 weeks to ferment and then tighten the lid.
- After 2-3 months your olives will be ready to eat.
How do you store olives after picking?
Store in a cool, dark place for six weeks before eating. The olives will keep for up to two years unopened. Once opened, store in the fridge, where they will keep for up to six months.
What do olives look like when ready to harvest?
Pick the olives when they nearly ripe, when they have begun to change colour from green to pinkish purple but are not fully black. When most of the crop have become this colour, harvest all the olives off the tree.
Are black olives just ripe green ones?
Black olives are the ripe fruits of olive trees. Ripe olives turn from green to a dark color ranging anywhere from light brown to a deep black color. After they’re harvested, the ripe olives undergo a curing process that can turn them even darker.
Are untreated olives edible?
When eaten raw, olives are extremely bitter and, for all intents and purposes, completely inedible. Not only is the texture completely different from what you’ll find after they’ve been processed (they’re more mealy and mushy), they also contain a substance called oleuropein that makes them bitter.
Do you pit olives before curing?
You can choose now to slit your olives, or leave them whole. Slitting each olive will allow the water and salt to penetrate it faster and remove the bitterness. If you leave them whole, they’ll need to sit in a brine a lot longer.
Is it OK to eat olives with your hands?
Olives can be eaten with your fingers when they are served as an hors d’oeuvre or garnish. Eat small olives whole and large olives in two bites. Table manners for eating olives in a cocktail.
Should olives float or sink?
The fruit will sink to the bottom of the container, but some will float to the top. This should be avoided since otherwise the part of the olives that is not immersed in the liquid will turn brown.
Why are olives still hand picked?
While it is labor-intensive, we believe it to be the most authentic way to begin the process. Olives that are hand-picked are each closely inspected to ensure there are no imperfections. Olives that are harvested by machine are usually imperfect and might contain pits, be bruised, sliced, rotten, punctured, and more.
Why do you soak olives in water?
Lye-curing: Lye-cured olives are soaked in a lye-water solution that quickly breaks down the olives’ waxy outer coating and removes the bitter oleuropein. The olives are then repeatedly rinsed in cold water to remove the lye. After rinsing, the olives are usually soaked and stored in a vinegar brine, or fermented.
Why are my olives mushy?
The salt in the brine, together with an acidic element such as vinegar or a slice of lemon; and a layer of oil at the very top of the bottled olives, all help in the preserving. If you find that the olives are soft and mushy when you go to eat them, they have not been preserved properly and MUST be discarded.
Do olives turn black when ripe?
Olives naturally turn black as they ripen. When unripe they are green. As they ripen they get reddish, then purplish and finally black. “Ripe Black Olives” in a can are actually olives which are neither black nor ripe when they are picked.
How do you know if olives are rotten?
The olives will begin to have an odor if they are going bad. Their texture and color may also change and they may develop mold if spoiled. If the top of the lid on the jar or can is rounded and dome shaped instead of flat across, the olives have most likely gone bad probably because the jar/can was not sealed properly.