Picholine Marocaine (Beldi)
The variety that covers almost all of Morocco: green table olive, dry-cured black Beldi, and a robust oil.
The Picholine Marocaine — despite the French-sounding name, a distinct Moroccan variety — is the olive of Morocco, planted across the overwhelming majority of the country’s groves. It is impressively versatile: picked green it gives the firm Moroccan green table olive ; ripened and dry-salt-cured it becomes the wrinkled black Beldi ; and pressed it yields a robust, fruity oil. One variety doing nearly every job a country needs.
- Origin
- Morocco (nationwide)
- Also called
- Beldi (dry-cured form)
- Type
- Table & oil
- Colour
- Green or black
- Flavour
- Robust, fruity, savoury
- Speciality
- Dry-cured black Beldi
- Best for
- Table olives, oil, tagines
One olive, a whole cuisine
Moroccan cooking leans on olives — in tagines, with preserved lemon, on every table — and almost all of them are this one variety in one form or another. Cured green and cracked, it is firm and savoury ; left to ripen and packed in salt, it shrivels into the intense, chewy black Beldi ; pressed, it gives a full-flavoured, fruity oil. Few varieties carry a national cuisine so completely.
The dry-salt-cured Beldi is meant to be wrinkled, dark and intense — that shrivelled look is the style, not spoilage, much like the Greek Throuba. Moroccan oil, long exported in bulk, is increasingly bottled under its own name and worth trying. Look for “Picholine Marocaine” or a named Moroccan estate.