How to make grandma’s crushed olives in brine recipe…

Crushed olives in brine Calabrian grandmother’s recipe. A different way than in oil to preserve crushed olives Calabrian style, this time in brine, as well as green or black olives in brine, without crushing them.. The recipe was given to me by an elderly grandmother I met a few years ago, I wanted to share it with you because I had a chance to try them and they are excellent, on par with those preserved in oil, a method I have always used along with my mom to preserve crushed olives.

Ingredients :

  • Green olives
  • 80g (about 1/3 cup) salt
  • 1L (about 4 1/4 cups) water
  • Chili pepper, to taste
  • Garlic, to taste
  • Wild fennel, to taste)

How to make grandma’s crushed olives in brine recipe:

  1. We wash the olives. We crush them, on a wooden or marble surface, using stone, or a simple meat pounder. We immediately remove the stone, as we crush a bunch, and immediately soak them in water.
  2. We soak them 3-4 days, in clean water, until they are sweet. We change the water twice a day, morning and evening, to speed up the process of debittering the olives. If necessary we let them soak a few more days. We always cover, with a cloth and ppo then a weight, or a plate, submerged in water.
  3. We prepare the brine before potting the sweetened olives. We put 80 g of salt per liter of water in the pot. We prepare several liters if we have several kilograms of olives to store. For a couple of kilograms of olives we need about 1 liter of water, but it is always better to prepare a little more, to have it already cold when needed.
  4. When the olives are sweet, and good to eat, just taste a couple of them, we drain them, wash them, squeeze them hard, by hand or with a press, or we can also not squeeze them at all. We season them with chili, garlic and fennel seeds, left for a while with vinegar and salt, dry them before using them.
  5. We finally cover them with the brine prepared earlier and left to cool. We top up the jars with more brine in case it has reduced in level after a few hours. We close the jars and leave them in the pantry, already after a few days they are good to eat, just drain the liquid, and season them with a drizzle of olive oil.

Bon Appétit!