How to Cook with Olives: Tapenade, Puttanesca and Beyond
Beyond snacking — how to turn olives into tapenade, puttanesca and other big-flavour dishes.
Olives are a flavour ingredient, not just a snack
Briny, savoury olives bring instant depth to cooking. A handful transforms a sauce, a salad or a piece of fish. Used as an ingredient, they do the work of salt and umami together.
Ways to cook with them
- Tapenade: blend olives, capers, oil and a little anchovy into a paste
- Puttanesca: olives, capers, anchovy, garlic and tomato
- Baked fish or chicken: scatter olives in the pan
- Pasta and pizza: sliced olives for briny pops
- Salads and grain bowls: halved Kalamata for brightness
Quick tapenade, step by step
- Pit about a cup of olives (Kalamata or a mix)
- Add 1 tbsp capers, an anchovy fillet, a garlic clove and a squeeze of lemon
- Pulse with olive oil to a coarse paste
- Taste — it shouldn't need salt
- Spread on crostini, fish or pasta
Cooking notes
Olives are salty, so season the rest of the dish lightly and taste before adding more salt. Add them toward the end of cooking to keep their texture, or earlier if you want them to melt into a sauce. Rinse very salty olives if needed.
Tips
- Pitted olives save time for sauces and tapenade
- Green olives add sharpness; ripe olives add mellow depth
- Save a little brine to season dressings
- Warm olives with herbs and citrus for an easy appetizer
Cooking with olives, made simple
Once you treat olives as an ingredient, they become one of the fastest ways to add big flavour. The Unico olive range — green, ripe, Kalamata and stuffed — covers every use.