Olives: The Complete Guide to Table Olives, How They Are Cured, the Major Varieties and What to Serve Them With
Pick an olive from a tree and bite it, and you will understand why it took humans a few thousand years to figure the fruit out. Raw olives are ferociously bitter because of a compound called oleuropein, and no amount of ripening removes it. Every table olive you have ever enjoyed has been cured: soaked, salted, fermented or treated with lye until the bitterness leached out and something worth eating remained.
That process is where all the variety comes from. The same olive can be green or black depending on when it was picked, crisp or soft depending on how it was cured, and mild or intensely savory depending on how long it sat in brine. This guide explains the curing methods, the varieties worth knowing by name, the odd truth about American canned black olives, what tapenade actually is, and how to put olives on a table so that people keep reaching for them.
Green, black and everything between
Olives are picked at every stage of ripeness. Green olives are unripe fruit, firm and grassy. Olives left on the tree turn from green through rose and purple to black as they ripen, softening and developing more oil. A "red" or "turning" olive is one harvested in the middle of that change. So a green Manzanilla and a black Manzanilla are the same variety picked at different times, and the color of an olive tells you first about ripeness, only second about type.
One exception is worth knowing because it explains an entire aisle. The uniform, mild, pitted black olives in American cans are usually green olives that have been cured in lye, then oxidized with air and fixed with ferrous gluconate, an iron salt, until they turn evenly black. They are not ripe olives. They are a technology, and once you know that, the difference between them and a naturally ripened Kalamata makes sense.
How olives are cured
Brine curing is the oldest and most flavorful method. Olives sit in salt water for weeks or months while lactic bacteria ferment the sugars and slowly draw out the bitterness. The result is complex, tangy and savory, with the texture intact. Most of the olives serious people care about are brined.
Lye curing is the fast method. A dilute alkaline solution breaks down the oleuropein in hours, after which the olives are rinsed and often finished in brine. Spanish-style green olives, including the stuffed Manzanillas of Seville, and the bright green Castelvetranos of Sicily are made this way, which is why they are mild, buttery and crisp rather than funky. Done well, it is a legitimate tradition, not a shortcut.
Dry salt curing packs ripe olives in coarse salt for weeks until they shrivel, lose moisture and concentrate. The wrinkled black olives of Morocco and Greek Thassos are made this way, and they taste intense, salty and almost meaty. Water curing and oil curing are regional variations; the wrinkled "oil-cured" olive is usually a dry-salted olive later dressed in oil.
The varieties worth knowing
Bella di Cerignola. The giant green olive of Puglia, the largest table olive in common circulation, with a firm, mild, faintly sweet flesh that eats more like a fruit than a pickle. The protected designation is La Bella della Daunia, and the ones we carry come from Fratepietro, a Cerignola family firm working the local variety. These are the olives to put out for people who think they do not like olives.
Castelvetrano. Sicily's bright green Nocellara del Belice, lye-cured then brined, with a buttery, almost sweet flavor and a snap. The most crowd-pleasing olive in the world, and the one restaurant bars serve by the bowl.
Leccino. A central Italian variety, small and oval, usually grown for oil but excellent as a table olive when harvested at the turning stage. I Contadini's Leccine in brine, from the same Puglian producer behind our puntarelle and lampascioni, are picked red-purple and brined simply, and they taste of the olive itself, fruity and clean, with a gentle bitterness the Cerignola lacks.
Manzanilla. The small, green Sevillian olive of the Spanish aperitivo hour, lye-cured, brined and very often stuffed. The classic stuffing is anchovy, and Espinaler's anchovy-stuffed olives, from the Barcelona house that has run a vermouth bar since 1896, are the reference: salty, briny, meaty, made to be eaten by the handful alongside a tin of razor clams or mussels and a small glass of something. If you have wondered why Spaniards can turn three tins and a jar of olives into an evening, this is the jar.
Kalamata. Greece's almond-shaped purple-black olive, brined and usually finished with red wine vinegar, giving it a fruity, sharp, winey taste. The correct olive for a Greek salad and the wrong one for a martini.
Gordal, Picholine, Niçoise, Lucques. Gordal is the fat Spanish green olive often served with a single blanched almond inside. Picholine is a small, crisp, elegant green olive from the south of France. Niçoise is the tiny brown-black Cailletier of the Riviera, the only olive that belongs in a salade niçoise. Lucques is the crescent-shaped green olive of the Languedoc, prized by chefs for its fresh, buttery flavor. These appear on the shelf as the importers have them.
Tapenade and the other olive spreads
Tapenade is Provençal, and the name gives it away: tapeno is the Provençal word for capers, which are not optional. The classic version, attributed to a Marseille chef in the 1880s, pounds black olives with capers, anchovies and olive oil into a coarse paste, sometimes with garlic, thyme or a splash of brandy. Anything without capers is an olive spread, which is fine, but not tapenade. Divina's olive bruschetta is a chunkier Greek-style spread built for toast; spoon it onto bread with a slice of tomato, stir it into pasta with a little of the cooking water, or fold it into a vinaigrette.
The spread shelf runs beyond olives. New York Shuk's matbucha with olives and mint is the slow-cooked Moroccan tomato-and-pepper condiment with olives folded in, and it belongs beside eggs, under grilled fish or on a piece of bread with labneh. Villa Jerada's chermoula is the Moroccan herb, garlic and spice marinade that fish is baked in, and it turns a jar of plain olives into a marinated one in ten minutes.
How to serve olives
Room temperature, always. A cold olive is a muted olive; take them out of the refrigerator half an hour before guests arrive. Keep the pits in when you can, because pitted olives lose brine and firmness and because a bowl of pits on the table is part of the ritual. Put out a saucer for them.
Marinating is the single most effective upgrade. Drain a jar of brined olives, warm a few tablespoons of good olive oil gently with strips of orange or lemon peel, a bruised garlic clove, a sprig of thyme or rosemary, fennel seed and a pinch of chile flakes, pour it over the olives and let them sit an hour. Warm marinated olives, served just above room temperature, disappear faster than anything else on a table.
Pairing follows the aperitivo logic. Salty, briny food wants something bitter and cold: vermouth, a dry sherry, a bitter aperitif, or, without alcohol, a sparkling tea. Olives beside tinned fish, cornichons, good bread and a wedge of hard cheese is the entire Spanish and Italian pre-dinner tradition in five items.
Cooking with olives
Olives in a hot pan release their oil and become savory rather than sharp. Green olives braised with chicken, lemon and saffron is Moroccan; black olives with tomato, capers and anchovy on pasta is puttanesca; olives roasted with a whole fish or a tray of vegetables season everything around them. Chopped green olives brighten a grain salad of farro, and a spoon of tapenade under a piece of seared fish is a two-second sauce. Taste before you add salt to any dish with olives in it.
Storage
Unopened jars keep for a year or more in the cupboard. Once opened, keep olives submerged in their brine in the refrigerator, where they last for months; if you have drained the brine, cover them with olive oil instead. Dry-cured olives keep in a sealed container. A white film on the surface of the brine is usually harmless yeast; rinse the olives if it bothers you. Softening, off smells or a slimy texture mean the jar is finished.
Where to start
For a crowd: Fratepietro's Cerignolas. For the aperitivo purist: Espinaler's anchovy-stuffed Manzanillas with a tin of shellfish. For someone who actually likes olives: I Contadini's Leccine, warmed in oil with orange peel. For toast: Divina's olive bruschetta. Everything is in our olives and tapenades collection, and it ships nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com, or come taste at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver. Athena gave the olive to Athens and won the city for it, which remains the best review any food has received.
