Brine-Curing Olives at Home, Step by Step
The friendliest way to cure your own olives is the oldest: a jar, salt water, and a little patience. Here’s the whole method, start to finish.
Set the jar going
Start with firm, unblemished olives — green for a sharper result, purple-turning for a milder one. Rinse them, then either slit each with a knife or crack them lightly (this lets the brine in and speeds things up), or leave whole for a slower cure. Pack into a clean jar and cover completely with a brine of about 100 g salt per litre of water (a ~10% brine). Keep every olive submerged — a small weight or a sealed water-filled bag on top does it.
Wait, taste, finish
Leave somewhere cool and out of the sun. Over the next several weeks to a few months, the bitterness leaches out and a gentle fermentation builds flavour; top up or refresh the brine if it clouds heavily or smells off. Start tasting at three to four weeks. When the bitterness is where you like it, transfer to fresh brine and dress with olive oil, lemon, garlic, herbs or chilli.
Keep them under the brine, always — olives exposed to air can spoil. Trust your senses: good curing smells clean, lactic and briny. If anything ever smells genuinely rotten or grows fuzzy mould (a thin surface film is normal and skimmed off), start again. Done right, it’s almost foolproof — and far better than any jar you can buy.
A olives101 how-to.