Home Made Olives Recipe

How to make it

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• 1. Caution the lye can cause severe burns if it touches your skin. Have vinegar at ready to neutralize the lye in case of accident. I feel it important to advise working with lye has its dangers. Use this recipe at your own risk. This recipe is from the University of Davis.
• 2. Note, it is very hard to buy lye as it was taken off the retail market as drug makers where using it to make drugs. You have to go to a chemical supplier, show your drivers license, and state the use of the lye.
• 3. Clean olives of stems and leaves and rinse
• 4. Set up area to weigh lye
• 5. Wear gloves and goggles
• 6. Using the one gallon bucket, pour two gallons of water in the five gallon bucket
• 7. Weigh out 5 1/2 ounces lye for two gallons of water
• 8. Do not allow water to touch lye while weighing
• 9. Exert extreme caution when weighing lye
• 10. Carefully pour lye in the five gallon bucket
• 11. Stir water and lye. The lye will heat up the water, it will be hot!!!!!!!
• 12. Allow to cool for 15-30 minutes.
• 13. Carefully pour 20 lbs of olives in water, stir.
• 14. Carefully place plastic lid on olives. This prevents air from discoloring olives.
• 15. Place lid on bucket.
• 16. Using gloves, remove an olive after two days and cut a wedge. The olive should be green all the way to the pit. If there is white, carefully pour off lye water, make a new solution and check again in 24 hours. If still not green, another 24 hours should get the lye to the pit.
• 17. Once you see green to the pit, pour olives with lye solution carefully off into the strainer bucket. Capture the used sly solution and neutralize with vinegar. Allow water to evaporate and put remaining residue in a covered bucket, there will be very little material that is harmless.
• 18. Rinse 5 gallon bucket, fill with water to the top, pour about 2 gallons over the olives in the strainer bucket. You will see more dark color coming off the olives.
• 19. With about three gallons of water still in the five gallon bucket, pour olives in the bucket. Stir, place plastic lid on olives, place lid on bucket.
• 20. Wait 8-10 hours, pour olives back into strainer bucket, again rinse with two gallons, place back in bucket with water.
• 21. Wait 24 hours. Repeat rinsing.
• 22. Wait 8-10, repeat rinsing.
• 23. Wait 8-10, repeat rinsing. At this point it is safe to place your bare hand in the water. To determine if the lye is totally removed, stir the olives with your hand, stirring all the way to bottom of the bucket. There should not be any kind of a slick feel, like soap. If any slickness, rinse again. Of course rinse your hand and arm after stirring and feeling the olives.
• 24. Once the olives are free of any soapy feel, rinse once more.
• 25. To store olives, place 3 cups of table salt per gallon of water and place two gallons of water in the bucket. Stir the water well to dissolve the salt. Put olives in the brine mixture, cover with plastic lid, and place the lid on the bucket. This ratio will make the olives very salty but allow them to stay preserved for a couple of months in cool weather. Best if kept under 70 degrees or less.
• 26. To eat the olives, place an amount in a bowl of fresh water. Allow to sit overnight. Pour off water and taste olive. If too salty, repeat with new water until they are to your liking.
• 27. Homemade olives are addictive, you can't eat one.
• 29. Black olives in the can are really green olives just like from this recipe. Commercial canners use their own process of oxidation to turn the olives black. Yep black olives are green olives in disguise. They have to turn them black as various colors of green olives in a can would not be appealing to consumers, so they turn them black and everything is pretty. How about that!