A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to have a bucket of olives given to me by my mother-in-law’s friend. Not really sure what the exact olive variety is but these plump black beauties looked like big, juicy dark cherries and I couldn’t wait to preserve them.
Preserving olives is quite a trouble free process but will stretch over a couple of weeks of simple steps to bottle them, and then there is a month or so of waiting before you can enjoy them.
The key steps are to soak them in water for up to 10 days, mix them with the flavourings, bottle them and pour over the brine vinegar before sealing them and leaving them to pickle for at least one month.
My recipe calls for slitting the olives, but, to be honest, I never have time to do this…just a bit lazy, I guess, but they seem to turn out fine!
I use the same method for green olives and sometimes add coriander seeds instead of rosemary.
It is lovely to see a row of perfectly preserved jars sitting on the kitchen bench, and whenever someone drops in, they go home with a little jar of my black beauties tucked under their arm!
[yumprint-recipe id=’8′]