How To Make Your Own Olives

ingredients

All you'll need is

• Freshly picked olives
• Water
• Salt (500g +)
• One fresh egg
• Olive oil, to seal each jar
• Cling film
• Sterilised glass jars with lids

method

Step 1

1. Submerge the olives in cold water. For 7 days, you need to change the water each day. This process allows the olives to draw out bitterness and be more plump. Papou says "don't be impatient, you MUST do this" because he clearly could see that I couldn't be bothered doing this step, but he assured me in all his greek wisdom that this was a necessary process so... listen to the man.

Step 2

1. It's time to party! Firstly you're going to need enough boiling water to cover the olives in a container. Once it's boiled, let it cool slightly - while the water is still warm, we need to start adding the salt (it dissolves much more easily in warm water). Here is where the egg comes in. Add the salt to the water and stir until it begins to dissolve. Once you've added an impressive amount of salt (I'm talking cups and cups here), to test if the water is ready, add the egg into the water and if it floats, with around a 10c piece amount of the egg exposed out of the water, then it's ready! If it still needs more salt to float, then you need to keep adding more salt, allowing it to dissolve and then re-testing with the egg to find the perfect balance.
2. Some people like to make slits in their olives, but Papou only does this for some of his olives, but couldn't really give me a reason as to why - I'm thinking its more of a time thing, because making 2-4 cuts in each olive can be time consuming (and I sure don't have time for that!)
3. Once you've found the perfect balance, allow this water/salt mixture to completely cool before moving onto the next step.

Step 3

1. In sterilised glass jars with lids, start to add olives to just under the brim of the jar. Then, pour in that cold salty water to submerge. Add around 1cm of olive oil into the top of the jar (this will float at the top and separate). Add a little bit of cling film into the olive oil, covering the olives completely.
2. Leave the olives for around 4-6 weeks before they're ready to eat!