What do fresh olives taste like?

when they’re fresh, they’re very bitter and disgusting. i dont know what causes them to taste so good in the jar. olives are a fruit.

When picked from Olive trees that are very bitter. Certain spices, lemon, oil, sliced lemon, hot peppers for spicy ones are all included for the pickling process. I prefer jar olives over the ones in the can. Olives are a fruit. Keep this in mind..anything with a seed is considered a fruit.

Historically, olives were cured with lye. I always wondered how someone thought that up for food.

You can’t eat fresh off the tree olives, very bad! Have to be cured, then very good.

Olives are an awesome snack, especially in the summertime. This summer I’m going to keep some on hand in the fridge, chilled and ready to snack on.

The only difference between green olives and black olives is how long they ripen on the tree. The green ones are earlier…if they are there long enough they turn darker. The olives taste incredibly bitter, and make you pucker – kind of a combination of that very unripe-banana feeling mixed with the involuntary pucker you make when you eat a lemon. Salt leaches out the bitterness. People cure olives now with lye but originally in the mediterranean they were cured with salt, an abundant resource near the ocean. I cure my own olives here in California, thanks to some help I got on fluther from a fellow flutherite who lived in Portugal and helped me out with a recipe. search keyword “Olives” on fluther and you’ll find it. If you ever are in california in October, you can find fresh olives in the farmer’s markets.

Fresh=Delicious! Exclamation mark!

As a Greek, I love olives. Kalamata olives are pretty damn salty, but delicious. Green olives are sometimes bitter. Most black olives are not fermented so they have a more mild taste.
A lot of times it depends on how the olive is prepared or stored. An olive kept in vinegar it’s probably more bitter than one that isn’t.