Similarly, you may ask, how do you prepare olives off the tree?
Brining the Olives
Combine 1 part salt to 10 parts water and pour over the olives in a bowl or pot. Weigh them down with a plate and let sit for 1 week. Drain the olives and repeat the brining process for another week. Do this two more times so they brine for about a month or so.
Furthermore, what do you do with olives straight from the tree? Olives straight off the tree are mouth-puckeringly bitter. But transformed through brining or dry salting they become the delicious morsels we are familiar with. Here's a Greek method of curing olives that starts with a salt brine and then adds flavor with a vinegar, herb, and oil finishing brine.
Also know, are green olives poisonous?
Many olives have an enzyme called catechol oxidase that causes them to change from a green to a red-brown to a black, but some just stay green or black. But at all of these stages, they are too bitter though not toxic to eat, because of a chemical called oleuropein, which also has anti-microbial properties.
How do you eat fresh green olives?
Whether steeped in oil or a salt brine, olives only become truly edible after curing. The raw fruit is bursting with oleuropein, a bitter compound that must be removed prior to eating.
