At the supermarket where I work we have a room-temperature olive bar with quite a few varieties, and have had trouble with cerignola olives (and no others) developing little white flecks in the brine. Since they’re not nearly as salty as most kinds, I think it might be mold.
We’ll probably try keeping them in a jar in the wall cooler behind the counter, as we do for the cheese-stuffed ones, but they’re a lot less salty than the rest, so I just wondered if they’re supposed to be kept refrigerated.
The tub they come in has no info beyond the importer’s name, and I didn’t find any storage info on the Web.
Is the olive bar compleatly unrefridgerated? It sounds like olive oil coagulating, but that shouldn’t happen if it’s at room temprature. You might try draining the brine and tossing them in salad oil.
Yes, room temp all the time. The specks don’t look cloudy like chilled oil (more like dandruff! :eek:), and I don’t see any drops of oil when they’re fresh. The other olives are fine, and the only difference I see is the amount of salt.
I’ll talk to a manager about keeping them in oil, but I dread the thought of somebody spilling it.