Do you like pan-fried olives?
It’s a traditional practice that during the harvest period, we don’t miss the opportunity to pan-cook freshly picked olives.
They make a very simple side dish, cooked like this, plain, or with just the simple addition of a bay leaf or other aromatic herbs. For example, I like them a lot with rosemary. My mom adds a pinch of coarse salt, but as you can imagine… I don’t (😉 if you don’t know why read here).
Fresh pan-fried olives make an excellent side dish.
They are also a great main course of true rural origin if you add some sausage. 🙂
Yes, with sausages, whole or cut into pieces, you get a main dish that, as mom says: “eh, olives with sausage, are olives with sausage!” A mom-like way of saying they are the perfection of taste. And how can you blame her? They are truly delicious, trust me!
As someone who loves traditional recipes but also loves experimenting in the kitchen, this year I had the idea of adding that something extra to my pan-fried olives.
So today I present to you 2 (+2) very simple recipes. Two sides and two mains.
Enjoy your meal!
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👇 Below are more of my mom’s recipes: 😊👇
- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: Economical
- Preparation time: 3 Minutes
- Portions: 1
- Cooking methods: Stove
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Autumn
Ingredients
Below are the ingredients for 2 recipes, which will become 4 in the procedure. 😉
- 6.3 oz olives (freshly picked)
- 2 cherry tomatoes
- 1 clove garlic
- to taste chili pepper
- 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil (optional)
- olives (freshly picked)
- ham slices
- rosemary
- sage
- pepper
- oil
Tools
- Pan non-stick
Preparation
Before proceeding to cook, the olives must, of course, be washed.
Moreover, it’s good to check them one by one: they should be healthy, not bruised or have tiny holes, which could indicate pest infestation.
Cooking olives in a pan is very simple: they are ready in 10 minutes, maximum 15, with a closed lid. You just need to make sure to keep the flame at the lowest setting and check them from time to time by stirring with a spoon.
Done like this, plain and simple, they make a great side dish. And it’s a recipe in itself, already ready. 😋
👉 Using a non-stick pan, you can cook without oil; with other types of pans, for example, steel, a small amount of oil can be helpful.
For the following two recipes, I used both pans: non-stick for the olives with cherry tomatoes and steel for the olives with meat.
For this version, I added all ingredients raw: chopped garlic, chili, and a small splash of oil (practically a tiny teaspoon, like those mini coffee spoons). Then, having some cherry tomatoes, I added a couple, chopped them into pieces, so the moisture produced by the tomatoes helped the cooking (with a closed lid).
Here’s the result:
I proceeded as follows:
I cooked the olives in a pan with a closed lid, adding rosemary and sage and a teaspoon of oil for about ten minutes. Then I moved the olives with a spoon to the sides of the pan (you need a pan large enough to contain the planned meat) and in the center, I cooked the meat slices, adding a sprig of rosemary.
In the end, you can mix everything. In this case, the meat becomes dark due to the color released by the olives (for the following photo, I kept aside a slice with a light color, more photogenic, seasoned with a splash of raw oil before photographing it). 😉
Two notes:
In the ingredient list of this meat version, I didn’t specify the quantities because, in the hurry of cooking, I forgot to weigh everything, but I assure you that this is one of those recipes to be made by feel.
Regarding the ham, have you ever tried it? It’s very good, an economical cut that has nothing to envy to other cuts or types of meat, and I highly recommend it, especially as an alternative to sausage if you’re on a diet like me. 😊
Finally, I update this recipe by adding a fourth version.
I mentioned it in the introduction, this version with sausage, which in the first draft of this article I had thought not to include. But having received several requests from you, and since it is a true traditional recipe, undoubtedly the most repeated in rural tradition (on par with the first version, the simple side), here it is.
There’s no need to write a new ingredient list, you can put as many sausages as you want and as many olives as you want, in whatever proportion you like. And for cooking, I refer you to the three previous versions.
You can cut the sausages into pieces as my mom does, and as I show in the photo, or you can leave them whole, or you can crumble them. Either way, you’ll get a great main dish, to be eaten strictly with homemade bread. 😋
Enjoy your meal!
No Salt Tips
Cooked by my mom, pan-fried olives never miss a pinch of coarse salt, as per rural tradition. As you well know, I cook without added salt, so my olives are cooked this way, without salt.
If you are interested in trying to reduce salt, I invite you to follow these simple tips:
If you are interested in reducing or eliminating salt, always remember to:
▫ Gradually reduce salt, the palate must get used to it slowly and should not notice the progressive reduction.
▫ Use spices. Chili, pepper, curry, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, cumin…
▫ Use aromatic herbs. Basil, parsley, oregano, thyme, sage, marjoram, rosemary, mint…
▫ Use seeds. Sesame, pine nuts, almonds, walnuts…
▫ Use spicy veggies or fruit. Garlic, onion, lemon, orange…
▫ Use my salt-free vegetable granules and gomasio.
▫ Prefer fresh foods.
▫ Avoid cooking in water, prefer cooking methods that do not disperse flavors (griddle, foil, steam, microwave)
▫ Avoid bringing the salt shaker to the table!
▫ Occasionally allow yourself a break from the rule. It is good for the mood and helps to persevere.
If you don’t want or can’t give up salt:
▫ You can still try my recipes seasoning according to your habits.
See You:
On my new WhatsApp channel and on Instagram, on the Facebook page and Pinterest, in my two groups: Catia’s Group, in the Kitchen and Beyond and Exactly What I Was Looking For! and if you like… subscribe to my Newsletter.
On my new WhatsApp channel and on Instagram, on the Facebook page and Pinterest, in my two groups: Catia’s Group, in the Kitchen and Beyond and Exactly What I Was Looking For! and if you like… subscribe to my Newsletter.
Disclaimer (and Tale of Lived Life)
Following a comment received, I want to clarify what has already been written in my responses to the comment. Fresh pan-fried olives are a dish of the rural tradition of Romagna (and Tuscany, but I don’t doubt other regions as well), traditionally cooked during the olive harvest period.
Once upon a time, they were a precious food for farmers, my father (born in 1937) often told us that when he was a child, searching the ground for olives that escaped the harvest was one of the tasks assigned to the children, and usually, those were the olives that ended up in the pan. And in my family, they have always been cooked, for generations, in the ways I described in this recipe.
It’s true, they are bitter, sometimes more, sometimes less, and although bitter, they are delicious, provided you like the bitter taste, of course.
The bitter taste is due to compounds (phenolic compounds) that are present in olives (and other plants, for example, spinach and artichokes). Phenolic compounds are not toxic; in fact, they are mostly beneficial to health. But in olives, they are present in high concentration, and this is why olives are not edible raw and are bitter when cooked. To reduce or remove the bitterness (i.e., to reduce or remove phenolic compounds), the treatment consists of soaking the olives for 24-48 hours, changing the water every 12 hours. The cooking of olives in a pan as it has been passed down in my family does not involve soaking, just washing (it is not a tradition only in my family, I can affirm it for personal knowledge, but there are other examples online as well), it goes without saying that anyone who wants to treat them before cooking them can do so, and it’s good to do so.
Regarding gastrointestinal disturbances, I can assure you hand on heart that none of us have ever had any kind of disturbance after eating pan-fried olives, neither cooked alone nor cooked together with sausage or other meats. In any case, they are meals consumed only during the short olive harvest period and, as the wisdom of the grandparents teaches us, they are not a food to be eaten in large quantities, also because they are quite filling. It’s enough to eat them as a side dish along with other dishes and not to miss out on some slices of good bread.
I repeat: all this is based on my experience. Every recipe I have published on this blog, including this one, has first passed through my kitchen and my table. If fresh pan-fried olives turn out to be heavy to digest or cause disturbances for someone, disturbances of which in nearly 6 decades of life I am coming to know for the first time now, I do not feel I should hold my recipe responsible, what I can tell you is: change the type of olives, treat them with soaking, make sure you don’t have intolerances, try other recipes.
My recipes are a diary of what I cook, stories of experiences and suggestions, made available on these pages for free. Then, on the realization of recipes in other places, other kitchens, with other ingredients purchased (or picked, as in this case) in other places, and consumed by people other than me and my family members, it is evident that I cannot have a say and cannot assume responsibilities (as every food blogger and every cookbook author, right?).
