how to make marinated olives, olives in brine, marinated green olives In this article we will see how to make marinated olives in different ways (with vinegar, garlic, paprika, pepper, orange, oregano, thyme…).

Once the harvest olives is done, it is necessary to remove them bitterness, before you start to marinate olives.

It is also possible to directly buy olives in brine and marinate to our liking.

Before we can make our homemade marinated olives, we have to sweeten them, we can do it with water or diluted caustic soda. The fastest and most common way is to use soda to eliminate the bitterness of olives. In our publication on how to remove bitterness from olives You can see the process of sweetening the olives.

How to prepare olives?

Depending on our taste, we can choose between different ways to prepare the olives. How to prepare olives olives with soda, mashed, cracked, stuffed, black, dehydrated…

Salt point: If we have olives or olives in brine, it is very easy to get the salt point. We simply take the olives that we are going to season, drain them and put them in a container, finally, we add the water necessary to cover the whole olives (approximately 900 grams per kg of olives).

Marinated green olives seasoned with garlic

In Extremadura (Spain) the seasoning of olives of the variety Manzanilla Cacereña with garlic. A homemade marinated olives very similar to that of the renowned olives from Campo Real. In fact, many of these olives are produced in the cacereña factory.

The recipe for marinated olives is very simple, ingredients:

1 kg of green olives in brine
4-5 cloves of garlic

For it:

We drain the olives in brine and place them in a jar / bowl.
We add water to cover the olives.
Crush, chop or chop garlic cloves (the marinate will be taken faster if we chop them).
We add the garlic cloves to the bowl.
Close the container and wait at least one day to start consuming the olives.

The olives catch the garlic flavor quickly, so we can start eating the seasoned olives very quickly.

To preserve your own marinated olives with garlic, it is important that the water covers them, in this way contact with the air is avoided and we get that they do not oxidize.

This recipe was made by my maternal grandmother with olives of the chamomile variety and they are exquisite.

Marinated olives recipe with garlic and spices

This marinated olives recipe is very similar to the previous one, although we reduce the amount of garlic a bit and give it entrance to traditional spices. Personally it is the marinate olives that I like the most, the thyme and the oregano combine very well and give an excellent flavor to the olives prepared with this recipe.

As in the previous case, the recipe is very simple, ingredients:

1kg of olives preserved in brine
3-4 cloves of garlic
2 teaspoons oregano
2-3 sprigs of saucer thyme

Steps to follow:

Drain the olives and place them in a bowl.
We cover the olives with water.
We incorporate crushed or chopped garlic cloves, oregano and thyme.
Once we have seasoned the olives, we must wait at least one day to start enjoying them.

If we want the olives to be better preserved, we can add a stream of olive oil to the marinate.

Olive oil forms a film that protects food from oxidation and, thanks to the lower oil density, you can prevent olives from surfacing.

Green olives seasoned with vinegar and pepper

This marinated olives recipe comes from a marinated test that I made and gave a frankly good result. Vinegar gives olives a more dull green color, similar to olives sold in pickle stores.

Ingredients used in it marinate olive:

1 kg of olives in brine
35 grams of green pepper
3-4 cayenas or chillies
100 grams of vinegar

Instructions to follow:

Drain the olives and place them in a bowl.
Add the 100 gr of vinegar.
We cover the olives with water.
Add the 35 grams of chopped green pepper.
Chop the cayenne and add them to the dressing.
This seasoning of green olives needs more time to drink well, since the spice takes time to dissolve in the water. After a week, the marinate will be well taken, although it will continue to gain flavor over time.

Marinated olives with paprika

This is a marinated olives recipe from my mother, the paprika gives a more powerful touch to the marinated olives and helps in its conservation.

If we like the taste of paprika, this is an interesting preparation, in addition to the paprika, orange peel and garlic are added.

These are the ingredients that we will use to prepare this marinated olives:

1 kg of green olives in brine
10 grams of paprika
1/3 of the peel of an orange
2 cloves of garlic

Instructions to follow:

We drain the olives in brine and put them in a bowl.
We add water to cover the olives.
Add the 10 grams of paprika.
Add the crushed or chopped garlic cloves.
We split the orange peel and add it to the seasoned olives.

Cracked olives recipe

The cracked olives recipe are appreciated for retaining much of the original flavor of the olives. They are cracked in order to increase contact with water, favoring that they can be sweetened only using water. Making cracked olives is slower and laborious compared to making whole olives.

This year I made some fat olives in this way with good results. We can marinate them using the previous dressings or others that we like. In my house they like without marinated, the touch of bitterness we like. In this case, carrot slices were simply added to add color and take advantage of the natural sweetness of the carrot.

Ingredients used in the preparation of olives:

1 kg of olives cracked in brine
35 grams of carrot

How olives are made:

We take the cracked olives and put them in a bowl.
We add water to cover the olives.
Add the 35 grams of carrot cut into slices.
We wait 2 days for the brine to leave the olives.
After the wait, the olives will have the salt point and will be ready to be consumed.

How to make marinated black olives?

The marinated black olives that are usually bought are green harvested olives that are subjected to oxidation processes by the entamadora industry. Normally the variety used is Hojiblanca for producing olives with high firmness. Learning to replicate these processes at a home level is complex and the results will hardly reach our expectations.

Easier at the home level is the realization of passive black olives.

For this, the olives are dried with salt, although for good results we need to have”sweet”olive varieties such as Black from Sabiñan or Majatica di Ferrandina.

We can also sweeten and season the black olives with the previous preparations of olives. However, the shelf life of the olives is shorter and the sweetening process is more delicate. The most likely result is that the texture of black olives is softer than desirable.

Tricks to preserve seasoned olives

Olives in brine can last a year perfectly without deteriorating. However, once seasoned, the shelf life of homemade olives is not so long. Although we can get them to endure several months if we follow the following tips and tricks.

Protect olives from contact with air

To do this, we must prevent olives from floating on the surface of the water.

My grandmother had a trick for it, in the bucket of olives I placed an open plastic bag. The bag, floating above the olives prevents them from coming to the surface and oxidize.

It is also quite effective and”greener”, cover the olives with a sheet of olive oil, if possible, EVOO. In addition to the antioxidant properties of olive oil, olives are impregnated with an oil film that protects them from direct contact with the air.

Use of natural preservatives in marinate ingredients

The vinegar is the most used natural preservative with olives. It also acts as a flavor enhancer and allows to obtain very good marinate.

The paprika and the spices also help preserve olives.

Although, if we want to preserve the olives for a long period, salt will be our ally. The brine olives can last us all year long if the olives are harvested green and sweetened properly.

How to make marinated olives?