Smashed Olives

Olive Schiacciate (Smashed Olives)

For this process, you will need: Fresh olives, which you can pick yourself or buy from your local farmers market, buckets, plastic gloves, water, salt, vinegar, olive oil, herbs and a hammer.

Step one:

You smash!

Put on your plastic gloves so your hands don't stain, and now, with a hammer, you give it a bang bang on a firm surfaces. (it's best to do outside as it can be a bit messy.)

This is to de-pitt all the olives. These olives here are Size Jumbo, Kalamata, which is the biggest size)

Step two:

Once you have de-ptted all the olives, put them into buckets or tubs and fill them with water. Make sure all the olives are submerged, so what you can do is put a plate or bowl on the top.

This step is the longest step, which takes around 10 to 14 days. You must change the water every day at least once a day. This is to get all the bitterness out. For the first three or so days, I changed the water twice a day to speed up the process. You can always add a few lemon slices, which help take the bitterness out.

Step three:

After 10 to 14 days of being soaked in water, we now refill the buckets one last time. This time, we are going to add salt & vinegar.

By now, you can see the olives have changed colour from bright green to dark green/brown. You can now even taste the olives, and they should start to taste ok.

Fill up the buckets with water and, this time, add white vinegar and a lot of salt.

We now leave the olives in this salty water for at least 2 to 4 days.

Step four:

This is the fun part. We can now jar our olives. Add your herbs in the jars. I did most of these as just garlic, chilli, and oregano. You can also add fennel, bay leaf, and thyme (whatever you a-like)

Gently give them a press to get the water off, then put the olives in their jars. Fill all the jars up with extra virgin olive oil. If you like, add one lemon slice on the top for taste and to make sure the olives are all submerged under the oil.

If you really like you can eat the olives straight away but to get the full taste, aromas and best result, leave them for at least two weeks then you can mangiare (eat).

Finito la musica!