How to freeze olives – Yes, you can!

I didn’t think you could freeze olives. Ew, wouldn’t they come out dehydrated, limp, spongy, or some other form of grossness?

Looking around the internet, I found recounts of exactly that. They’re too water-based, and therefore, when thawed and reheated, all the water in them that previously froze, would come oozing out, leaving them quite disgusting.

But.

That’s also the same thing that makes them so awesome for freezing.

So how do you do it?

Cover them in water! Yep, put them in a muffin tin or small bowl or ice cube trays even – whatever portion size you want for later. I like the muffin tin because it was easy to gauge 1/2 cup portions and between two tins, I could freeze a bunch at once. Then, cover them in a shallow layer of water.

Once frozen, you can pop out your little olive ice cakes and toss them into a Ziploc plastic bag. Later, when you’re making tostadas or Mexican casserole or just feel like snacking, pull out a cup, toss it in a bowl, and microwave until just thawed. Don’t overdo it…some ice crystals are fine and will pop apart easily.

Or if you’re a little more patient, you can run the block under water, but still put a bowl under because the ice doesn’t take long to melt and olives will crumble out everywhere.

When I first bought the 3 pound can of lives, I agreed to only use them in baked dishes where any funky texture wouldn’t be noticed anyway, but even my mom was fine eating them after they’d been previously frozen, straight out of the bowl. Success!

And yes, that’s a lot of freakin’ olives. And yes, I had to slice them all because they came whole. At least they were already pitted! Well worth the few bucks to have a freezer stocked with olives for months for any ol’ random dish I wanted.

Comments

  1. Leave a Reply

    Arizona Girls
    July 30, 2011

    I would have never thought of freezing olives =/ But then I buy the smaller cans. Cost effective the big cans are probably better.. Hmm we might just have to give it a try =)

    You sent me a friends request on voiceBoks and I always look at the blogs =)

    Arizona Girls blog

  2. Leave a Reply

    Quirky Jessi
    July 30, 2011

    Thanks for stopping by, Arizona, and leaving such lovely comments. It’s nice to meet you! <3

  3. Leave a Reply

    Anonymous
    September 1, 2013

    But can you do it with deli olives in oil?

  4. Leave a Reply

    Quirky Jessi
    September 2, 2013

    Yes, you can. From what I’ve been told (haven’t tried either myself), there are two main ways you can do it.

    1. Rinse them first. Get rid of most of that oil and then do the same as above in my post.

    2. Leave them in the oil and put in ziploc bags. They’re going to be softer when you pull them out, so again, use this technique for when you’ll be using the olives in dishes….not serving them as though they’re fresh and eating on their own.

  5. Leave a Reply

    Anonymous
    July 8, 2014

    Perfect. Thank you for the info and especially the photos. They look great. I just ordered 5# of Kalamata olives from Amazon so we shall see.

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