Where can I buy raw olives (no additives/oils)?

folamh

Hi all. I didn't post this in the Dublin City forum as I think I'm more likely to get helpful answers here - hope that's okay? Anyway, I've been craving olives recently but all the ones in Dunnes/Tesco have additives which I try to stay away from. Anyone know where in Dublin sells them natural/raw?

Cheers.

brettmirl

Marks & Spencer do fresh olives...however they do have oil on them, usually rapeseed or olive oil.

The only other place I've seen fresh ones is at some of the markets around - sometimes there is an olive stand at the market in the People's Park in Dun Laoghaire.

The Hill Billy

Any olives that you get in Ireland will either be in oil or brine so as to preserve them during transport & storage.

folamh

Thank you both. I have seen raw olives in Ireland before: in pre-made garden/Mediterranean salads you get in Dunnes and such. Ideally I'd like to get raw ones but I don't mind if they're in a kind of healthy oil (olive oil, I guess). I suppose you can get these in those "cheese and olives" markets that are sometimes around?

the beer revolu

Raw olives are virtually inedible - they need to be fermented/cured/.

Funnily enough, I only saw raw olives in an Indian shop in Cork last week.
Had to ask what they were - they looked so different from the cured olives we're used to seeing.

The Hill Billy

I was obviously wrong. Sorry.
How the hell do they keep them fresh though?
Irradiation?

rubadub

the beer revolu wrote: »

Raw olives are virtually inedible - they need to be fermented/cured/.

It showed this on a channel 4 documentary the other week. And how many black olives are really picked green and treated with chemicals to become black.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5GG90J5sy0

The fourth episode of Food Unwrapped explores the difference between green and black olives, and why not everything that goes into beer processing is listed in the ingredients

Honey-ec

The Hill Billy wrote: »

I was obviously wrong. Sorry.
How the hell do they keep them fresh though?
Irradiation?

The pickling process preserves them.

OP, if you came across an actual raw olive in a salad somewhere you'd be writing a strongly worded letter of complaint; as the beer revolu stated, raw olives are more or less inedible.

folamh

Ah, thanks for the info guys. What I'm looking for then is not raw olives but whatever you call those untampered-with ones So I guess my best bet is those food markets. Strange to hear they are inedible raw. I used to be a raw vegan and encountered people who used so-called raw olives in their recipes.

The Hill Billy

Honey-ec wrote: »

The pickling process preserves them.

OP, if you came across an actual raw olive in a salad somewhere you'd be writing a strongly worded letter of complaint; as the beer revolu stated, raw olives are more or less inedible.

If they were pickled I wouldn't consider them to be raw though. That was my way of thinking anyway...

Honey-ec

The Hill Billy wrote: »

If they were pickled I wouldn't consider them to be raw though. That was my way of thinking anyway...

That's the point, they're not raw. You'd break your teeth on a raw olive.

This is what actual raw olives look like.

Mrs Fox

I've picked raw olives and tried biting into one. They taste/smell nothing like when they've been pressed/brined/pickled.

BaZmO*

I've seen people on cookery programmes a few times trying to eat olives straight after picking them, quickly followed by them spitting them out.
They're supposed to have a really astringent bitter taste, so therefore totally inedible.