My olives have been brining for 2 months, and are still quite bitter. I read to keep them in a cool place, here in Arizona when I started this process it was still in the 90's so I put them in the fridge. Is this too cold for the brining to work? How cool should it be? There is no basement here and the floor temp is about 68ยบ. Will this be cool enough?
How to brine olives – how cool is cool area to brine them
briningolive
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I think (as is so often the case with preprocessed meat) it will often depend on who you buy it from. I often buy kosher prepared birds (which are always pre-brined salted) and I've never had any complaints. The nice thing about kosher preparation, is that it is done according to very specific rules, under strict supervision. It's not a factory process.
On the other hand, I cannot abide the brined birds from major poultry companies. Their primary goal is to increase the weight of the bird, not the flavor.
Factory prep seeks to minimize time and cost. They will use cheap ingredients (largely just water and salt, with no added herbs) and they will use whatever process takes the least time, most likely injection, which has the added benefit that they can force more liquid (and therefore weight) into the meat than would normally come from absorption. They'll likely insta-freeze it, so wait time is probably not an issue, but freezing causes its own issues.
I would say, for best results, take your time. A nice leisurely soak, real salt, and no pressure on the meat. For best results (talking turkey here) look for "Natural" or "Minimally Processed": if it says that, you shouldn't have to worry about competing additives.
I suspect that the biggest problem here is that your brine isn't anywhere close to being strong enough. Cooks Illustrated has a good guide to the entire process but in a nutshell:
Sea salt is expensive and inefficient for brining; the impurities actually make it more difficult to dissolve and disperse properly. Kosher salt is generally recommended, although table salt is also fine.
A typical brine is 1/4 cup table salt and 1/2 cup sugar per quart, which translates to about 70 g and 140 g respectively per L. For very high-heat methods (grilling/broiling), you halve the amounts. Also, for kosher salt you need to double the volume (no change if measuring by weight). Even the lower, high-heat cooking concentration is almost twice as concentrated as what you're doing.
You also need to scale the amount of brine with the weight of the bird itself. The rule of thumb is 1 quart or L per pound (2.2 kg) of meat. For a whole chicken, which is generally around 6 or 7 pounds, 1.5 L of brine is nowhere near enough, especially if you're brining in a pot as opposed to a bag (does your 1.5 L even cover the chicken?).
It doesn't really matter if you butcher the chicken first (although most people don't). You're exposing slightly more surface area that way but not really enough to matter.
Make sure you are actually dissolving all the crystals! From what you're describing, you're getting high concentrations of salt in some areas and none in others. That means you didn't get proper dispersion. You really need to make sure that all of the salt (and sugar, if you're using any) is completely dissolved, otherwise you don't have a "brine", you have water with a bunch of little piles of salt. Some people will suggest heating or even boiling your brine to ensure proper dissolution; just make sure you let it cool off afterward if you do this, before submerging the bird.
In answer to your specific questions:
The container should be well-sealed to prevent evaporation, not to mention off-odours in your fridge. However, I've used pots with loose-fitting lids and had no problems. It doesn't make a huge difference as far as the efficacy of the brine.
Fridge temperature is ideal. Do not even think about using room-temperature water, that is highly unsafe for storing raw meat for 6-8 hours at a time.
As long as you don't overcrowd the vessel and do disperse the crystals properly, the actual amount of space is not a major issue. If it's exposed, it's exposed.
Longer than 12 hours is not recommended. Actually, according to CI, longer than 8 hours is not recommended. Don't overdo it - you're brining, not marinating.
No matter how you cook any piece of meat, it will give up a certain amount of water and therefore a certain amount of salt (from the brine). Left unstated is why you would even consider boiling a brined chicken; brining is primarily a technique for dry-heat cooking (roasting/grilling), and if you want to boil/poach/braise/whatever then you should be focusing more on flavouring the cooking liquid than the meat itself. I wouldn't bother brining if you're making chicken soup, there are better ways to flavour that.
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Best Answer
There are five treatments to process olives: Water cured, brine cured, dry salt cured, lye cured, and lye cured fermented. The main objective when curing olives is to leach out the oleuropein, which is the bitter compound found in fresh olives, and to ferment them, which improves the flavor and, of course, improves the shelf life.
It sounds like you are using the brine cure method. Oleuropein is water soluble. Chemically, the salt brine breaks the bonds between the oleuropein and sugars, allowing it to leach out.
So, first, you should replace the brine after the first week of curing, so that the leached our oleuropein is removed. Then, from what I gather by reading this, 2 months is the minimum curing time.
Curing time is impacted by temperature, salt concentration, and acidity. These factors can slow or speed the time. It looks like their recipes for brine cured olives proceed in a temperature range of 60 - 90 F (15.5 - 32.2C). Further, they recommend a 2 to 3 month cure (2 if you like more bitter olives).
So, I would suggest that your cure is happening very slowly because of the refrigerator temperature. It seems to me that your room temperature is ideal. I would just remove them from the fridge and check in a couple of weeks.