How to Process Olives with Lye and Can Olives in Jars

This video will show you how to process olives using lye and can them in jars so you can store them for a long time. This video is a little slow in some areas but I did it to show how the water slowly changes from deep red to pink to clear. It is important to leach out all the lye before caning the olives. I also show how to mix the lye and mix it with the olives.

The process or rinsing the lye ou of the olives takes about 7 days.

I use one quart Ball jars that I purchase from my local hardware store.

I use Red Hot Devil Lye, Sodium Hydroxide, from DudaEnergy.com, because I can not buy lye in California.



Warning - this lye it not user friendly, be careful, I always use safety glasses, you might even want to use latex/rubber (hospital) gloves.

I did not know this but - NEVER ADD WATER TO LYE, ALWAYS LYE TO WATER. That was from one of the people that left a comment.


I am going to try to explain the measuring system:

American system of measure:
5 (US) gallons of olives - use 1 pound (16 ounces) of lye
1 (US) gallon of olives = 3.8 liters of olives
1 pound of lye = 450 grams

Density of olives = 65%
5 (US) gallons of olives = 40 pounds x .65 = 12 kilos of olives

Reset of the World:

12 KGrams of olives - use 1/2 kilo of lye

24 to 1 ratio


Brine solution:

1 cup for salt for 1 gallon of water

or

250 ml for 3.8 liters of water