Drain Cleaner in Your Olive?! Keuringsdienst van Waarde Shows You
I’m crazy about olives; it runs in the family. My grandpa taught me to drink the juice from the jar of olives at a young age—I still do it (to the horror of some housemates). Black olives, green, purple or brown; I love them all. And did you know that white olives exist too? You might think the color is determined by the type of tree. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the episode of Keuringsdienst van Waarde. reveals.
From bright green to deep purple: they all come from the same olive tree. The color of the olives doesn’t depend on the type of tree, but on ripeness. The darker the olive, the longer it has hung on the tree. This doesn’t just change the color, by the way: it also becomes more wrinkled, softer and less bitter in flavor.
Shoe polish
Anyone who has ever picked an olive from a tree and enthusiastically popped it into their mouth knows: quite a bit still needs to be done before it tastes good. Salt, water and a whole lot of patience are all you need to turn those hard, bitter olives into something delicious.
But waiting takes time (= money), and growers run the risk of the olives falling or spoiling (= even more money). A solution was found: harvest olives while they are young and green, then treat them artificially so they turn pitch-black. As Johannes van Dam once wrote: ‘As if the olive had been colored with shoe polish.’
Keuringsdienst van Waarde made an episode about it. And what does it turn out? That artificial treatment is done with caustic soda. It sounds intense, and it is: it’s the same stuff as drain cleaner, only diluted. Hmmm, delicious, right?
Wrinkles
Every type of olive has its own character and flavor. But how can you tell a treated olive from one that has ripened naturally? Aside from the flavor (a little metallic), you can tell by the wrinkles and firmness. A naturally ripened olive is soft and wrinkled, just like natural women’s skin without Botox. And often not pitch-black either, but more of a dark purplish brown. Do you want to be sure you’ve got the right ones? Then steer clear of (by far most) supermarket olives.
Olives without drain cleaner
With Greek Kalamata olives (delicious in a Greek salad or on a drinks board, with a herby feta) and Italian Taggiasche olives, little flavor bombs, often preserved with fresh herbs, the trick is not allowed. And of course you can also buy Spain’s most famous Manzanilla olives (green, not very large and deliciously juicy, sometimes pitted and stuffed with anchovy, a piece of red pepper or tuna) with complete peace of mind, just like those enormous green Nocellara olives from Sicily. They taste soft and deliciously fatty, just like olive oil.
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