When buying wholesale olives Queensland, there are a lot of things you need to consider. If you are new to olives, it is possible that you have not embraced them yet. Or maybe you have spent a lot of time and money on the wrong products.

Olives around the world

You should think of olives as fruits with high nutritional value. Olives are native to the Mediterranean and they date back to biblical times. They start green and as they ripen, they develop flavour and colour. Some of the world’s major olive-growing countries include dream vacation locales – Greece, Spain, France, Italy and Morocco. Nearly all the United States crop comes from the state of California, which has a dry and warm climate that is conducive to growing olives.

Buy handpicked olives

While machine harvesting keeps it easy and fast, handpicked olives are better and you should consider them when buying olives. Certain varieties of olives are picked young when still green. This also applies to most supermarket olives. They turn black during the processing stage.

Most commercial olives are harvested by machine. This is a cost-effective way that operates on the premise that the olives ripen. The highest quality olives are handpicked and sorted by hand. They are also stuffed by hand. However, if you want olives that are handpicked and sorted by hand then you should be ready to pay more for them as wholesale food suppliers charge more for them.

What is the cure?

You cannot eat raw olives because they are very bitter. That is why it is necessary to cure them. The most common curing method is lye curing. Olives picked either fully mature or green soak in a lye solution and a saltwater brine. This process draws out the bitterness from the olives and triggers fermentation. You will get the briny and lactic acid taste of the olives. Some olives are lightly put in lye to cure and then washed in water. They are left unfermented. This process gives you the sweetest olives.

Dry curing with salt is common in Morocco. Salt draws out the moisture and bitterness, leaving you with a wrinkly fruit that is packed with a lot of flavours. We also have what is known as the ripe olive. These are green olives that are often lye cured. They are then exposed to ferrous gluconate and oxygen. This is an iron compound that produces a smooth, black and mild-tasting olive. On the other hand, green ripe olives are produced similarly but they are not oxidized. That is why they remain green.

Pitted or unpitted

When buying wholesale olives Queensland, you can also buy pitted or unpitted. Pitted olives are great because they are convenient but you will lose the flavour so the choice is up to you. Pitted olives take on the flavour of the brine they sit in. They become deflated. You should therefore think about how you plan on serving them before making a decision.