# What's Your Favorite Kind of Olive



## Chief Longwind Of The North (Jun 30, 2019)

My favorite olive is the Castelvetrano olive, followed by black, ripe olives, medium sized.  I'm also fond of garlic-stuffed olives.  What's your favorites, and how do you use them?

Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North


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## caseydog (Jun 30, 2019)

Mezzetta olives stuffed with jalepeños. Perfect with a cocktail on a nice evening on the patio. 

CD


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## Andy M. (Jun 30, 2019)

Kalamata olives are my favorite.


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## taxlady (Jun 30, 2019)

I love Kalamata olives. I am also quite fond of some garlic stuffed green olives we bought as well as some seasoned, Provençal, green olives.


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## caseydog (Jun 30, 2019)

taxlady said:


> I love Kalamata olives. I am also quite fond of some garlic stuffed green olives we bought as well as some seasoned, Provençal, green olives.



I bought some garlic stuffed olives a few months ago, and I expected to love them. But, for some reason, I didn't like them at all. That really caught me by surprise. 

CD


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## blissful (Jun 30, 2019)

I like most all olives. I found I liked the Lindsay brand of pimento stuffed green olives. They tasted 'just right', not too acidic, not too anything. And I'm pretty much anti-brand, I don't usually worry about brands too much.


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## Andy M. (Jul 1, 2019)

You guys have heard me mention this local/regional brand before. They have a nice selection of quality stuff.


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## pepperhead212 (Jul 1, 2019)

Probably kalamata are my favorites, mainly because they are the most available.  It's been so long sense I used to get a lot of other varieties, but I rarely go to those markets any more.  There were some that I would get to cook with that I didn't even know the names of, but they were good to mix with kalamatas, and the oily types, for some recipes.  And some other olives that I used to get at a gas station, that a Turkish guy ran, surprised me, as I didn't realize that such good olives came from Turkey!  He had a bunch of interesting foods there.


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## larry_stewart (Jul 1, 2019)

Black and Kalmata are my first choice.

Theres a other one, not sure the name.  Its a longer variety, proportioned similar to a date.  Usually sold together in tow colors ( red and a unique color green).   I always seek those out  when Im at an olive bar.

I like the garlic stuffed too, but I had a bad experience once.  I bought what I thought was garlic stuffed, just to bite into it and realize something was horribly wrong.  Spit it out, looked at the label, and saw it was stuffed with Tuna.   Even when I ate meat, I never liked any kind of sea food at all.  Its one of those things I just don't understand how people like.  Anyway now everytime I see a stuffed olive, I get that feeling in my stomach.


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## larry_stewart (Jul 1, 2019)

Whats funny about olives in our family, when we were young, olives were considered a treat, so they were only served at dinners during special occasions.   My Brother, sister and I would literally fight over them.  My mom would have to hide them somewhere until the moment she actually served them, or we would eat them before it was dinner time ( and we'd get screamed at).  When she finally served them, she had to scope out the best place to either place the bowl of olives, or strategically hand the bowl to one person at the table , and have it passed around in a certain direction that would put me and my brother as the last ones to get the bowl, cause she knew we would grab hands full and finish them up.   She then got wiser and had a decoy bowl of olives that she knew my brother an I would raid, but would give the other guests a chance to get their olives from the second bowl.  Now fast forward a few decades.  My brother and I are in our 50's now, and my mother still plays the same game with the olives, serving techniques, decoy bowls.  I laughed every time, because even to this day we get in arguments about who gets the olive bowl first, and who took too many.. when we could just go to the store at any time and splurge $2 or less to get our own can of olives.  Its just more fun and they taste better when you know you got more than your sibling    My mom yells at us, as if we were 6 or 8 years old.


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## skilletlicker (Jul 1, 2019)

I like pimento stuffed green olives well enough that it is mostly all I've bought for a couple of years. Often store brand, sometimes more exotic Alcaparrado mixes, occasionally variations on homemade versions like this one, with home roasted red peppers replacing pimentos.

As a kid, I loved the canned black olives that Mom bought for special occasions. I'd steal one can at a time from her pantry; she was a bit of a food hoarder. There was hell to pay when an "occasion" would come along and all her olives were gone.

A few years ago I was seduced by the new olive bar in the corner grocery and would buy an 8-oz tub of something different every week. Kalamatas were my favorite of those but the truth is I can't afford $7.99/lb olives.


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## GotGarlic (Jul 1, 2019)

Oil-cured black olives that I had for the first time in Turkey  So good.


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## Aunt Bea (Jul 1, 2019)

I still use the inexpensive stuffed olives in a jar and canned ripe olives.

I like to take a 1/2 cup of pimento stuffed olives chopped roughly and mix them with an 8 ounce brick of cream cheese.  It's great on celery or as a schmear on toasted muffins, bagels, etc... 

Please don't waste the brine it makes a great dirty martini!

6 parts vodka, 1 part olive brine, a dash of dry vermouth or not, shaken over ice and strained into a chilled glass, a few stuffed olives on a pick for garnish.

I've actually never had higher quality/priced olives, I don't want to risk getting used to a lifestyle that I can't afford to maintain!


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## msmofet (Jul 1, 2019)

I like just about any/all olives except the wrinkled oil cured olives.
No offence to anyone who likes them.
For some reason, to me they taste like they are cured in motor oil. 
But I don't like cilantro either.


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## msmofet (Jul 1, 2019)

Aunt Bea said:


> I still use the inexpensive stuffed olives in a jar and canned ripe olives.
> 
> I like to take a 1/2 cup of pimento stuffed olives chopped roughly and mix them with an 8 ounce brick of cream cheese. It's great on celery or as a schmear on toasted muffins, bagels, etc...
> 
> ...


 I use those olives also.

I like the brine and olives added to tomato juice with salt, pepper, a shot of hot sauce and lemon juice.


Cream cheese and green olive is wonderful.


Also anchovy & green olive paste added to salad dressing is fantastic.


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## CraigC (Jul 1, 2019)

Love them and their namesake salad, Nicoise olives!


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## Linda0818 (Jul 2, 2019)

I love the pitted black 'pearls', any size. I pop them like candy.

Not crazy about green olives, because they're so salty, but I do like them on pizza occasionally. However, at a gourmet olive tasting once, I had the most amazing green olives (large) stuffed with whole cloves of roasted garlic. 

Fabulous.

I _do not_ like Kalamata's.


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## Cooking Goddess (Jul 13, 2019)

All of them, pretty much. I really like pitted, colossal black olives - one on the end of each of my fingers.  

While I don't particularly care for stuffed olives. I am a fan of those jars of cheap, sliced pimento salad olives. Long time ago when I was a kid, my Mom would buy jars of almond-stuffed green olives. LOVED those! I never see them anymore.

My SIL and I both love black olives. Way back when in our dating days, we double-dated to see "M.A.S.H.". I got a can of pitted black olives from my Mom's pantry, drained them, and put them into a ziplock bag. During the movie, I pull them out of my purse and whisper "want some?". We could see our dates' eyes roll all the way back even in the dark.  When they moved, I gave her a four-pack of the snacking size Black Pearls.


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## ezduzit (Jul 26, 2019)

Kalamata, then Castelvetrano (less salty), both from Whole Food olive bar, and eat both of them as a dessert.


I searched a half-dozen or so other markets for the bottled Kalamata with the lowest salt content, and the lowest I found was at Trader Joe's, but I am still searching.


I tried rinsing them in a colander to lose some of the salt content as I eat quite a few in one sitting, but with only minor improvements.


What do you all do salt-wise, besides eating less, if anything?


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## skilletlicker (Jul 26, 2019)

ezduzit said:


> Kalamata, then Castelvetrano (less salty), both from Whole Food olive bar, and eat both of them as a dessert.
> 
> 
> I searched a half-dozen or so other markets for the bottled Kalamata with the lowest salt content, and the lowest I found was at Trader Joe's, but I am still searching.
> ...


Hello, ezduzit, and welcome to the forum. I watch sodium due to blood pressure. My strategy is to use olives as an ingredient instead of a side or main dish and then proportionally reduce or eliminate any other added salt.


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## ezduzit (Jul 27, 2019)

skilletlicker said:


> Hello, ezduzit, and welcome to the forum...




Glad to be here skilletlicker.




I had thoughts of letting them set in a bowl of water and changing them out several times.


I've soaked salty Feta cheese in milk for five minutes or so and it works, but I'm kinda wincing at the thought of doing that to olives.


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## Vinylhanger (Jul 28, 2019)

I'm a luddite.  Just give me a can of black olives and life is good.


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