Olives, Sicilian Style in Brine

Whole green olives fermented for months in a brine seasoned with dill pickle spice, fennel and garlic. The diagnostic detail is a comparison UC makes itself: these come out more bitter than the cocktail olives they resemble, and the reason is an absence rather than a fault — the commercial version gets a lye bath as well, and this one is fermentation only.

Ingredients

THE OLIVES

• 10 lb green-ripe olives, usually Sevillano (discard any showing rose or red-brown colour — they will soften)

SEASONING, PER QUART JAR

• 1 level tablespoon dill pickle spice
• 1/2 teaspoon fennel seed, or a sprig of fresh fennel or dill

Chopped garlic, to taste

• Whole peppercorns and dried chilies, for a hot version

BRINE — LARGE OLIVES (Sevillano, Ascolano)

• 1 gallon cool water
• 1 cup pickling salt (10 oz)
• 2 cups vinegar (5% acidity)

BRINE — SMALL OLIVES (Manzanillo, Mission)

• 1 gallon cool water
• 1 1/2 cups pickling salt (1 lb)
• 2 cups vinegar (5% acidity)

TOP-UP BRINE FOR THE VIOLENT DAYS

• 1 gallon cool water
• 1 cup pickling salt (10 oz)
• 1 2/3 cups vinegar (5% acidity)

Directions

Key ingredients

Salt

1. Step 1 - Sort, and be strict about colour. Green-ripe fruit, any variety, but Sevillano is the classic — and with Sevillano, discard any olive showing rose or red-brown, because it has started to ripen and will soften rather than hold up. Nothing is cut or cracked: these go in whole.
2. Step 2 - Pack the jars and season them individually. Quart or half-gallon glass jars that seal, or food-grade pails for larger amounts. Into each quart: 1 level tablespoon of dill pickle spice (a rounded tablespoon per 2-quart jar), 1/2 teaspoon of fennel seed or a sprig of fresh fennel or dill, and chopped garlic. For a hot version add whole peppercorns and dried chilies.
3. 🔴 Step 3 - Match the brine to the SIZE of the fruit. This is the part that is easy to get wrong. Large olives shrivel in strong brine, so Sevillano and Ascolano get a medium-strong brine of 10 oz (1 cup) salt per gallon. Small olives do not shrivel, so Manzanillo and Mission get a strong brine of 1 lb (1 1/2 cups) per gallon. Then 2 cups of 5% vinegar per gallon either way. Do not alter these concentrations — the salt is doing preservation work, not seasoning.
4. Step 4 - Cover, lids loose, and hold at about 70 °F. Fermentation is fastest between 70 and 90 °F.
5. ⚠ Step 5 - Days four and five are the violent ones. Gas, foam and froth, and brine pushed out of the jar. Keep the containers full at all times and top up with the replacement brine — 10 oz salt plus 1 2/3 cups vinegar per gallon. An olive above the brine line is the one that spoils.
6. Step 6 - About two months, until the gas stops. When bubbles stop forming, tighten the lids firmly.
7. Step 7 - Then another two to four months. This is where the flavour arrives. Total is four to six months, and there is no shortcut.
8. Keeps at least a year in a cool dark place, in the brine, provided the jars stay airtight — which minimises surface yeast and mould — and the lids do not corrode.

Notes

Where the numbers come from. Olives: Safe Methods for Home Pickling, UC ANR Publication 8267 (Yada and Harris, UC Davis, 2007), read in full. An earlier version of this recipe was built from a county extension digest of that publication and has been corrected against the original.

🔴 A correction, and it is the reason this recipe reads nothing like the one it replaces. I first shipped a recipe called Olives, Cracked Green (Sicilian Style): mallet-cracked green olives, water-cured for a fortnight, then held in a weak brine. That was wrong twice. In 8267, “Sicilian style” is not a water cure at all — it is a brine ferment, filed under BRINE-CURED OLIVES, using whole green fruit over four to six months. And the cracked-green water cure I had described is real but is UC’s Mediterranean style, which is now Olives, Water-Cured (Green).

The error came from working off a county extension digest rather than the publication it digests. The digest is not wrong so much as compressed, and the compression fused things the primary keeps apart. It is a good argument for reading the actual source, and I would not have caught it from the outside, because the fused version looked perfectly plausible.

⭐ UC’s own comparison is the best line in the recipe. Sicilian-style olives are “similar to the common Spanish-style cocktail olives but are somewhat more bitter because they are only fermented in brine.” Commercial cocktail olives also get lye, which strips more of the bitterness. So the extra bite in the home version is the absence of an industrial step, not a failure of your fermentation. Worth knowing before you decide something went wrong.

⚠ The brine strength is a fruit-size decision, not a preference. Getting it backwards gives you either shrivelled Sevillano or a Manzanillo ferment too weak to protect itself. And for long storage, UC’s anti-softening figure is a 10% brine — 13 oz (1 1/4 cups) salt per gallon; pectin-degrading microbes can soften a batch within two weeks below that.

Related: Olives, Brine-Cured Greek Style is the same fermentation with ripe black fruit and no seasoning. Olives, Lye-Cured (Reference) is what the cocktail-olive industry does that this recipe deliberately does not.