Maria's Sicilian-style black olives

As promised, here's Maria's method for making black olives.

Order black "sun-dried Greek olives" from the Olive Pit. They don't have these listed on the site, so you have to call them to get them. They are black, salted, little non-pitted olives.

Maria gets about 10 pounds of them in the fall and freezes them in batches.

This method is for about 2 pounds of olives. You need olive oil and some oregano too.

The processing is simple:

1. Cover the olives with water in a sauce pan. Bring the water to boil and simmer for a couple minutes. Dump the water out.

2. Repeat step 1. This gets a lot of the salt out of the olives.


3. Drain the olives well and pat dry.
4. Put them on a sheet pan in a single layer and put in a 350F degree oven for about 5 minutes. Get all the surface water off them.


5. Let them cool.


6. Put them in a container and cover with olive oil.
7. Add a bit of dried oregano. 1-2 tablespoons?

These will last forever if covered and left in a jar.

They are yummy. I like the green olives better, which I will also document here at some point. In the meantime, here's a picture my neighbor took a couple years ago of Maddie crushing green olives.