Growing your own olives is rewarding – and with Arbequina olive trees, you can truly enjoy the full cycle from tree to table. This guide will show you how to harvest Arbequina olives at the right time and a simple way to cure olives from your tree so they become deliciously edible. Fresh olives are extremely bitter straight off the branch, but with a little patience and a basic curing process, you’ll be able to savor the fruits of your labor.
When and How to Harvest Arbequina Olives
Timing is important for harvesting olives:
- Harvest Season: Arbequina olives typically ripen in the fall. You’ll see olives start out green and then gradually turn rosy-brown or dark purple-black when fully ripe. For olive oil production, many growers harvest when olives are mostly purple (mid to late fall). For table olives (for eating), you can pick them green (for a firmer, more bitter olive that will be cured longer) or wait until they turn black (softer, slightly easier to cure).
- How to Pick: The simplest method is hand-picking. Wear gloves (olive juice can stain and irritate skin) and gently pluck each olive from its stem. Ripe Arbequina olives should detach fairly easily. If you have a lot of fruit, lay a tarp under the tree and shake the branches or use a small rake to comb through the branches – olives will fall onto the tarp. Be careful not to crush the fruit; bruised olives can spoil during curing. Gather the harvested olives into a bucket or basket.
- Select Quality Fruit: Choose healthy, firm olives. Discard any that are very soft, shriveled, or have obvious damage (like holes from olive fruit flies). A mix of green and purple olives is fine for curing; just know that fully green ones may take a bit longer to cure. Ideally, start the curing process as soon as possible (within a day or two of harvest) because fresh olives don’t keep well at room temperature.
Preparing Olives for Curing
After harvesting, rinse the olives in cool water to remove dust or debris. Now decide on a curing method. Common methods include water curing, brine curing, dry salt curing, or using lye. Here we’ll focus on an easy brine curing process, since it’s beginner-friendly and yields excellent results for Arbequina olives.
Optional – Cracking or Slitting: You can speed up the curing process by cracking each olive open or slitting the sides with a knife. This helps the bitter compounds leach out faster. To crack olives, gently hit them with a mallet or the bottom of a jar – just enough to break the flesh, not smash the pit. This step is optional, but if you skip it, expect the curing to take longer.
How to Cure Olives in Brine (Basic Method)
Curing olives is all about removing bitterness (oleuropein) and fermenting the olives slightly in a salt solution. Here’s a simple brine cure suitable for Arbequina olives:
1. Initial Water Soak (leaching out bitterness): Place your rinsed (and cracked, if you chose to) olives in a large glass or food-grade plastic container. Cover them completely with fresh water. Let the olives soak for about 7–10 days, changing the water daily. This water soak draws out a good deal of the initial bitterness. You’ll notice the water turning yellow-brown each day – that’s normal. By day 7 or so, the water should be less intensely colored, indicating much of the oleuropein has been removed.
2. Prepare a Brine: After the water soak period, mix a salt brine solution. A good starting brine is 1 cup of salt dissolved in 1 gallon of water (or about 3 tablespoons of salt per quart of water). Use non-iodized salt (pickling salt or sea salt) for best results. You can also add 1/2 cup of white vinegar per gallon to the brine – this adds flavor and helps preserve the olives. Stir until the salt is fully dissolved. Let the brine cool if you heated the water to dissolve the salt.
3. Brine Fermentation: Drain the olives from the soaking water and place them into clean glass jars or a ceramic crock. Pour the salt brine (completely cooled to room temp) over the olives until they are fully submerged. It’s important all olives stay under the liquid to prevent spoilage – if necessary, place a small sterile weight (like a glass disc or a zip-top bag filled with a bit of water) on top of the olives. Cover the jars loosely (to allow some fermentation gases to escape) or with an airlock lid if you have one. Store the jars in a cool, dark spot (a pantry or basement is great).
Over the next few weeks, the olives will ferment in the brine. You might see a thin white film on the surface of the brine over time – this is a type of yeast often called “kahm yeast” and it’s harmless. If it appears, just skim it off and ensure the olives are still submerged. The brine might also get cloudy; that’s normal during fermentation.
4. Curing Time: Brine cure Arbequina olives for about 4 weeks (if cracked) or up to 6–8 weeks (if left whole). Taste test an olive periodically (maybe once a week after the first few weeks) to check bitterness. It’s okay if they’re very salty – you’re mainly checking that the bitterness has subsided. If still bitter, let them cure longer. Arbequinas that started green will likely take longer than fully ripe black ones. Be patient – the flavor improves with time.
5. Finishing & Storing: Once the olives taste good (no raw bitterness, just a pleasant mild olive flavor and saltiness), it’s time to prepare them for long-term storage. Drain off the fermentation brine and replace it with a fresh storage brine: about 1/2 cup salt per gallon of water (or 2 tablespoons salt per quart). This brine can be less salty than the fermentation brine since most bitterness is already out. You can also add vinegar to this storage brine (around 1/4 cup per quart of brine) for flavor and preservation. Pack the olives into clean jars and cover with the fresh brine.
At this stage you can get creative by adding flavorings to the jars: popular choices are garlic cloves, lemon slices, dried oregano, rosemary sprigs, chili flakes, or bay leaves. These will infuse the olives with extra flavor over time. Seal the jars and store them in the refrigerator (for the freshest taste) or a cool, dark place. Home-cured olives will last many months when kept in brine – always make sure the olives stay submerged and watch for any signs of spoilage (off smells or mold – which is rare if properly brined).
Before eating, some people like to rinse or soak a batch of olives in fresh water for a few hours to remove excess salt, then dress them with olive oil, herbs, or other seasonings.
Enjoying Your Home-Cured Olives
Congratulations – you’ve successfully cured your Arbequina olives! Home-cured olives tend to have a firmer texture and more vibrant flavor than store-bought ones. Rinse a few and try them. If they are too salty for your taste, simply soak them in plain water for an hour or two, then drain, and dress them with a bit of olive oil and herbs.
Use your olives in all the ways you love: tossed in salads, as part of an antipasto platter, chopped into tapenade, or just as a snack with cheese and bread. There’s something special about knowing these olives came from your very own tree.
Curing olives is a slow process, but it’s not difficult – and the results are well worth it. You’ve learned how to harvest Arbequina olives at their peak and how to cure olives from your tree using a simple brine method. From here, you can experiment with other curing techniques or brine recipes to refine the flavor to your liking. Enjoy the authentic, home-grown taste of your Arbequina olives – a true farm-to-table reward for the care you’ve given your tree!