Any olive lover will tell you: There’s nothing quite like the meaty, tangy, salty, rich taste of table olives. Olives are unique in so many other ways, as well, from how they measure up nutrition-wise, to how they’re cured to make them tasty enough for consumption. Here’s everything you need to know to enjoy olives, including cooking, pitting, selecting and storing.
What Are Olives, Anyhow?
With their hard pits surrounded by flesh, olives are actually stone fruits (drupes) like cherries and peaches. But the fruit similarity ends there. Olives have a low sugar content (only 3% to 6%) and high fat content (12% to 30%), while other stone fruits have almost no fat and up to 30% natural sugar content. Olives also contain oleuropein, a bitter compound that makes them inedible when fresh. Green or black, colossal or tiny, all olives must undergo a curing process to remove that…