If you’re an olive-lover, then great…I am too. And I will buy you a jar of the best kind.
The catch? Well, if you’re like me, you know that STUFFED olives are among the best kind ever and can easily open a jar and just stand there, in the kitchen, eating them directly out of said jar, until–oops–where does the time go? It’s like you’ve eaten half of the jar already!
So I will buy you a jar of them. But they have to be stuffed and not just with pimentos because that’s regular/average…so it’s boring. I don’t care if it’s what you like or prefer, my offer of buying you a jar only holds if you pick one of these five stuffings (in the poll).
Which would you pick? Which, of the five possible stuffings, is your favorite?
If they’re going to be stuffed, my preference is for tart green ones stuffed with habanero peppers. I put jalapeño as the closest approx but they aren’t bitey enough.
Oh, and here I thought this was going to be about types of olives. I was gonna go castelvetranos and manzanillas.
As for stuffed olives, I confess, pimento is my favorite, as it just adds a little bit of sweetness without getting in the way of the olive. Second favorite is almond. Beyond that, I don’t really like them stuffed with anything.
ETA: Oh, okay. If you’re giving me free olives and I must pick one then… this is a tough one. I guess I’ll go with garlic.
Garlic, jalepeno and blue cheese are all good. I went ahead and chose blue cheese in the poll because I just tried those for the first time recently and they were great. The blue cheese tang really complements the olive flavor.
My favorites though are the big green queen olives that still have the pit. Now I want to go buy a jar.
I mostly use olives as an ingredient, not on their own, and anything I’m going to put olives into, I’m also going to put garlic into. So I might as well have them stuffed with garlic.
Similar appeal to blue cheese: just a blast of umami. Olives + anchovies are a classic pairing (along with capers and garlic) in stuff like puttanesca and tapenade. A blast of salty and savory!
Anchovies and green olives go great together. One of my favorite pizzas has sliced green olives, capers, anchovies, and sausage as toppings and a sweet domenica tomato sauce. Mmmmmmmmm.
Now, stuffed olives I’ve had that Idle didn’t mention include almond stuffed olives, feta stuffed olives, and a few I can’t think of.
Costco has garlic-jalapeno stuffed olives, which are my favorites, but your polling doo-hickey would only let me choose one or the other, so garlic won.
