For years I had been told that olives are green or black depending on when they were picked or they were picked at the same time but processed in different ways. Which is true?
Olives are unusual sources of oil, in that almost all other vegetables oils reside in the fruits' seed, whereas in olives the oil is in the flesh.
As olives ripen, their colors change form straw-colored to green, purple, & finally black. The transformation from green to black takes place over a period of 3 - 4 months, olives may be picked at any one of these stages ( except when they are straw - colored), depending whether for oil or for eating at the table. Purplish olives generally produce better quality oil than fully ripe black ones.
The olives on a tree don`t all ripen at the same time, so there is always a mixture of stages to e harvested. Perhaps the biggest problem faced by olives growers is deciding exactly when to harvest for the best yield of the best stage of ripeness for the olives' intended purpose. Over the years, different country and regions have developed and maintained their traditional harvesting practice, which contribute to the different flavor characteristic.
For the table use, all olives must be processed in some way; you cant't snack on them right off the tree because they contain a bitter phenolic compound called oleuropein. It must be removed either by microbial fermentation or by soaking in a strongly alkaline solution such as sodium hydroxie (lye).
In California, semi - ripe, greenish - purple olives are soaked in a series of lye solutions of diminishing concentrations, being rinsed and aerated after each soak. This treatment, aided in some cases by the addition of ferrous gluconate, and iron compound, turn the olives throughly black, after which they are canned.
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