Help ! what do I do with the olives now ?

[walnuttr]

Did some street harvesting of olives last weekend, soaked the 1 1/2  buckets in caustic soda brew overnight then it stretched into 21 hours 'cos I did some driving for the day...poured off the heavily tanned caustic brew, flushed with town water and have had 2 full days now of clean water soaks.... picked up courage this morning to bite-test one, 'cos my hand didn't get slippery when I stirred the morning batch of rinse-water.
    they taste of nothing much, soft/ mushy, not oily, ( OK that's the caustic effect, right ? ) but a faint maybe caustic / plastic residue taste after sucking on the pip for 10 seconds or so.  Next batch might try the local winemakers for  certified food-grade caustic.  ?
Now what?   The 3 recipies talk of 4 to 8 days of water soaking until this stage......then preserving in heavy brine  brews......
    So.....Can I go straight to a brine brew now ?
    And..... Can I use potassium Chloride as part of  the salt mix  to keep my eventual  Sodium intake down a bit  ?
Anyone have practice at this and maybe suggest a final treatment  / preserving recipie?

now to figure out how to patch a picture into here......W

Error: This forum has exceeded its attachment space limit. Your file cannot be uploaded.

Which means the whole forum has got too big for its cyber-space allocation..?  ? 

[flowerweaver]

Are you trying to upload it directly from your computer? Instead you'll need to upload your photo to a photo sharing service like Flickr or Picasa first, and then copy the share code into the body of you post.

[copse]

Or imgur, is what I use.

[raymondo]

I've never cured olives but friends do it every year from the fruit they grow. They do brine soaks, no caustic soda involved. The way they do it is a lacto-fermentation, like making sauerkraut. I've never asked them the details.

[templeton]

I've never done the caustic soak, so can't offer specific advice on this issue, but I have preserved olives for a number of years, so can offer some principles that mght guide your actions.
There's essentially two things you are trying to achieve when preserving olives - remove the nasty bitter flavours, then preserve the olives for future eating.
From my reading, there are three ways to remove the bitterness
1.chemical neutralisation - caustic soda, I think woodash does the same thing.
2. leaching - this can involve a range of methods including dry salting to remove lots of the moisture, then fresh water soaks; slicing the skin then a couple of weeks of soaks and rinses , smashing green olives(the bottom of a full 300ml beer bottle works well - drink from a separate bottle, tho then soaks and rinses, which is the fastest method and can achieve edible olives in a week or so.
3. lactofermentation, which involves placing fresh washed olives in a brine solution (I use 10% by weight), then waiting for a couple of years while the fermentation removes the bitterness (I not sure how this works, but work it does). Mine were edible at about 18 months, but still had a bit of spritzig on the tongue at this stage.
The leaching method removes the bitterness, but also removes some of the flavour compounds, the 2 year method results in lovely flavoursome olives, with a richness of flavour I've not found in other olives, but it's a long wait.
I've read that placing a cut lemon or two in the mix adds citrus overtones, and the change in pH is beneficial, but I can't remember why - reducing mould growth, perhaps?
Preserving the olives can either involve brining, vinegar, (or a mix of both), dry salting, or just pop them in a ziplok bag and freeze them.

If your olives are now not too bitter to eat, I suggest they are ready to preserve, tho I'm not sure how the dilution/removal of the caustic works. Not having tasted caustic soda, I'm not sure how you would tell.
My recipe for final preserving is a quarter of a lemon, a small dry chilli, 10% salt solution, and whatever dry herbs are around - basil, oregano, bay, rosemary, etc. Use dry herbs, there is a chance that wet herbs might include sufficient moisture to breed nasty bugs.
Brined olives can be preserved under oil (olive, naturally) but excluding oxygen with damp foodstuffs is a bit tricky - I avoid it.
They can also be pickled in vinegar or acid solutions, but I've never tried it.
So picking olives now, you are southern hemisphere?
T

[steev]

In long fermentation, you don't slice/bruise the fruit? Green or ripe? If bruising, does the brand of beer affect the result? Can hard cider be substituted? Damn! Curing olives may be so complicated.

My Grand-uncle Gottlieb once served me olives he'd foraged from the urban wilderness and cured; when I praised the minor sharp tang they had, he was appalled, thinking they should have no bitterness, whatsoever. I thought that little zing was great.

I am reminded of a California Rare Fruit Growers monthly meet I went to, which had a speaker who was an "aaamond" grower; she'd brought raw kernels of 1/2 dozen varieties to illustrate difference of bitterness (cyanide? levels). I caught minor flak for preferring the most bitter (these were all sweet nuts), but they were untoasted and that was the least "blah".

[walnuttr]

"So picking olives now, you are southern hemisphere?"

For sure, NZ East Coast. soft-rock hill country with overtones of rhyolitic volcanic ashes.
Thanks for the pickling / preserving tips;
I've started on final rinses in a light brine, 250 grams in about 6 litres ( pound salt / 5 qts)
so will crank up the salt loading for the jar-filling in a couple of days time.
Now; pickling in a local cider, that sounds like time to experiment.
Your shout
Long fermentation; worth another round of the street trees.
Muchas thanks, W

[templeton]

Have a look at the recipes here www.markdymiotis.com/food/processing-olives/

I've found my olives take way longer than this guy suggests. Note he doesn't do any rinsing.
T