‘The texture is perfect – meaty with a fleshy bite’: the best supermarket green olives, tasted and rated

It turns out there are lots of quality green olives out there, from big, fat, meaty Greek ones to more complex, nutty Italian alternatives …

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Green olives, which are picked when they’re under-ripe, tend to be more bitter than black ones, but that bitterness also brings with it depth and complexity. Many of the cheaper olives I tasted have a strong, wine-vinegar acidity that I don’t really enjoy straight from the jar. I do, however, appreciate that punch when they’re paired with other ingredients: sliced on pizza, tossed into salads or, my favourite, skewered with an anchovy and a pickled guindilla pepper to make that classic Basque pintxo, the gilda. Salty olives are also brilliant for seasoning dishes such as tagines or in a tapenade crust for roast chicken – just remember to season after they’ve imparted their salty flavour.

This tasting led me to reconsider what makes a green olive excellent. The test group were all completely different, ranging from ones with rich olive oil and woody herb tones and a great meaty texture to others with strong acidic tones balanced by sweet apple notes. All are delicious in their own way, and considering that I’m not usually a fan of pitted green olives, I was impressed by the overall quality.