Smoked Olives

[Meathead]

Smoking olives takes them to another planet. They are super in cocktails, fantastic on pizza, glorious in pasta. Make a smoky tapenade and spoon some onto a burger.

Make them in a smoker for a deeper, longer lasting richness, but if you’re in a hurry for a martini you can use a smoking gun. The aroma is lighter and more ephemeral, but quite nice.

Makes. 1 ½ cups smoked olives
Takes. 45 to 60 minutes in a smoker, 5 to 10 minutes with a Smoking Gun https://amzn.to/2VCTOPG
Special tools. Grill topper or Smoking Gun

1 ½ cups brine-cured olives, pits removed

About the olives. You can use either black or green brine cured olives. Oil-cured can harden almost to the point of inedibility.

1) Smoker or grill. Light your smoker or set up your grill for 2-zone smoking, get the indirect side to 225°F,and get some smoke rolling. Spread the olives in a grill topper and smoke for 1 to 2 hours until they are at the level of smokiness you like.

2) Smoking gun. Place the olives in a sealed smoking chamber and insert the nozzle. Light the sawdust. Run three to four smoke cycles, adding more sawdust as soon as the last load runs out.

[Jerod Broussard]

Love me some olives straight out the jar.

[holehogg]

Black garlic butter. Smoked olives.
Right up my alley.

[jgreen]

Can you smoke them, then drop them back in brine to store, or will that wipe out the smoke taste?

[aladdin4d]

Store them in gin!

[Polarbear777]

2 hours at 225?

[aladdin4d]

I'm guessing it depends on the size of your olives. When I tried it with some giant olives it took just under two hours. I'm sure fines or brilliants would be done in half that time or less. Olive size = meat thickness more or less.

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

I love olives... and I love smoke... not sure why I didn't think of this when beginning my quest to smoke random abnormal things. Is there a reason to hot smoke them? I'm thinking this time of year I can easily cold smoke them and in the summer I can still stay under 190.

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

So, no one ever answered. Today I did canned black and bottled green garlic stuffed, I did half cold (140-ish) for twice the time and half as Meathead states. I never knew I needed these in my life, but both turned out amazing, just the extra oomph to add a lil something new. The "hot" ones were amazing on their own, the cold ones were good but not as good as the hot. I returned the cold green stuffed ones to their brine jar for future use. The rest will end up on a pizza or something

[T-bone]

Great info. I'm totally trying this. Thanks.

[Bluegill]

Gotta try this!

[CrazypantsBBQ]

Smoked olives are glorious. I often smoke all the ingredients for olive salad for muffalettas (olives, capers, cocktail onions, etc.), and the smoke, as with almost anything, takes it to another level. I also recommend smoking marinated artichokes, marinated mushrooms, and giardiniera. I have a Traeger among my smokers, and find that the "smoke" setting really works well; it's low temp enough that feta-stuffed olives don't melt, and they're quite good. Take your antipasta platter up several notches with smoke.

[Mr. Bones]

Yum!

Thanks, Brother