Raw Olive Taste Question

[seand11]

just fyi, all olives are unpalatable until treated with chemical lye and then most are cured.

edit: lye is the chemical that burned a hole in the hand of Edward Norton's character in Fight Club.

[Sheryl]

Lye can be used, however many companies use brine solutions as well. And one of the reasons so much pre treatment is needed is that most olives are picked unripe. In fact the sliced black olives in cans (I have read) are actually green unripe olives that are turned black during processing why whatever strange and mysterious methods are used...

One thing I LOVE about the raw specialty olives sold is that they are actually done from RIPE olives. This is HUGE and I love them so much. I'ts harder to harvest, but so worth paying a little more for. If you look at olives sold at markets for making prepared olives they are all really unripe and hard.

Cheers,
Sheryl