When the weather starts turning cooler here, it’s olive harvest time.
We don’t have a lot of olive trees, but enough to keep the family supplied with oil for the year. Consequently, we don’t use any fancy harvesting machines, it’s all done by hand. Nets are put down on the ground to catch olives, and small hand rakes are used to detach them from the branches. They’re then gathered up and carted off to the frantoio to be pressed into olive oil.
There are different methods used to make the oil. One method takes the olive paste, spreads it on large disks and presses the paste into oil. The frantoio we took our olives to this year uses a centrifugal method to get the oil out instead.
You start with the olives. As you can see, they’re mixed in with leaves and twigs. These get sorted out and the olives get washed using just water in a vibrating machine. The water and vibration together gets the olives clean.
They’re then fed to the crusher
The crusher has three large rotating wheels – and yes, the pits are crushed in there too.
The resulting paste has a purply color.
The paste is then processed in this machine with a long corkscrew drive and then goes through the centrifuge.
The oil comes out and is strained before being decanted into your containers
Of course, the best thing to do with new oil is to serve it on grilled bread (bruschetta) with a little salt.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
I can smeall the new oil on hot bread all the way to Philly!!
Reply
Mary Reply:
November 19th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Years ago there was a Swedish Chef on TV who would say “I wish you had Smell-a-vision”. There’s nothing like it. Yum!
Reply
I’m there! Love oil right from the press on a piece of toasty bread. Is there anything better in the world?
Maybe lobster.
Judith in Umbria´s last blog post..Happy Birthday to you!
Reply
Mary Reply:
November 19th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Yes, the oil is good but…..Did you have to mention lobster?
Reply
Interesting! Never saw that before. Love the pix.
Reply
Mary Reply:
November 19th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Thanks Becky. There’s always something interesting to see. Although I have to admit, this year I was home with the little guy so I had O take the pictures.
Reply
Mmmm. We harvested our olives for the first time this year. New oil is wonderful! Thanks for posting those photos, I didn’t get to go to the frantoio so I had no idea what the process was like.
KC´s last blog post..Complimenti
Reply
Mary Reply:
November 20th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
It’s pretty neat to watch. If you get a chance you should go at least once just to see it.
Reply
[...] that when I tasted the fresh oil I loved it and instantly wanted to bring some home. This article, New Oil, from The Flavours of Abruzzo, describes the methods of turning the olives into oil. [...]
[...] that when I tasted the fresh oil I loved it and instantly wanted to bring some home. This article, New Oil, from The Flavours of Abruzzo, describes the methods of turning the olives into oil. [...]
Olive oil is very tasty and has some nutty taste too.’*,
Reply
Olive oil is very tasty and it has very low saturated fats.,,-
Reply
olive oil is a great additive on foods since it has low saturated fat’~;
Reply