Black Olive Tapenade is an easy recipe with garlicky deliciousness! Serve with toast points for a fuss free appetizer, stir through pasta, use for bruschetta or as a dip or spread. Quick and simple to make, it is fuss free and effortless.
Olive recipes make entertaining a breeze! Try either the Black Olive Dip or Green Olive Dip if you can't get enough olives!
Recipes like my Grazing Platter, Artichoke Olive Tapenade and Coconut Prawns, can be prepared in advance and then you can party with your guests! My Rocket and Cashew Pesto has similar texture to tapenade and they share common serving suggestions.
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Recipe Highlights
Black Olive Tapenade has many uses! It is versatile and brings great flavour to many recipes. You will likely find many more than one reason to love it!
My Chicken Liver Pate, Sun-Dried Tomato Tapenade and Easy Green Olive Tapenade are ideas for serving as toppings on the Easy Crostini which takes barely anytime at all to prepare!
Olive tapenade recipes are sophisticated and stylish, but seriously easy to make. We literally throw all of the ingredients into our food processor, blitz and serve! Serve with homemade pita chips to get your party started!
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Ingredients
The photo below shows you exactly what we need for this recipe. They are all simple, easy to find ingredients. Scroll to the printable recipe card for exact measurements.
As you can see, we have:
- Sliced black olives: perfect for topping pizzas with or making tapenade with! These are pitted and sliced for easy use. You can also use whole pitted black olives.
- Pitted Kalamata olives: read the label carefully for these as often pitted and whole olives are right next to each other in the shop! The whole ones are ideal for snacking and grazing platters, the pitted ones for making tapenade.
- Olive oil: this ingredient helps to combine all of the other ingredients for the tapenade, as well as adding a depth of flavour.
- Capers: we drain these (they will come in brine) but there is no need to rinse them.
- Parsley: curly or flat leaf is fine. You can use your favourite type.
- Lemon juice: bottled or fresh lemon juice will work well. Use whichever is the most convenient for you.
- Garlic: I prefer to use whole fresh garlic cloves. You can do the same or use jarred minced garlic.
- Anchovies: we only need a few of these. They add a great depth of flavour to the recipe.
Top Tip: You can easily find the olives at your local grocery store, in a jar with the antipasto ingredients!
Instructions
Here are the step by step photos to make the recipe. You will need the food processor and we simply add the ingredients and then blitz them together!
- Add sliced black olives to food processor bowl (Photo 1)
- Add Kalamata olives (Photo 2)
- Capers (Photo 3)
- Garlic (Photo 4)
Top Tip: For a vegan tapenade, omit the anchovies as an ingredient in the recipe!
- Add anchovies (Photo 5)
- Next add the lemon juice (Photo 6)
- Followed by the parsley (Photo 7)
- Lastly add olive oil (Photo 8)
Once the tapenade ingredients are all in the food processor, we blitz it for a few seconds to chop everything up and combine!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Black Olive Tapenade?
Black Olive Tapenade is a recipe that used black olives, garlic, capers, anchovies, parsley and lemon juice to make an olive spread.
It is most popular as an appetizer idea as you can serve it as finger food or a dip.
Often referred to as black olive paste, it is a versatile recipe that works with so many serving ideas.
How do you eat black olive tapenade?
There are many options and ways in which you can eat black olive tapenade. Try some of the ideas listed below:
- On crostini
- Stirred through pasta
- As part of a canapé
- As part of a dip platter
- Paired with various tapas
- Drizzles on fish
- As an appetizer
- Part of a grazing platter
- Spread for toast
- As a salad dressing
There is no limit to the ways to use this tapenade!
Expert tips
These tips are to help you master this recipe from the 1st time you make it:
- Have all of your ingredients on hand and ready to go
- Omit the anchovies for a vegan option
- Blitz only for about 5 seconds
- Make and freeze this recipe for easy entertaining!
If you love using olives when in the kitchen, making tapenade is an excellent use for them.
The bread you see in the photos is known as Toast points. They are are freshly toasted and easy to make!
To make, remove the crusts from a regular individual slices of bread, cutting each slice on the diagonal and in ½ and spray with cooking oil. Bake for approx 5 mins until golden brown!
Related Recipes
Make entertaining fuss free and get the party started with these entertaining ideas:
- Green Olive Dip
- Spicy Olive Dip
- Black Olive Dip
- Sun-dried Tomato Tapenade
- Artichoke Olive Tapenade
- Olive Tapenade
- Grazing Platter
Find all of my olive tapenade recipes in the one place!
Adrianne xx
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📖 Recipe
Easy Black Olive Tapenade
Equipment
- Food processor
Ingredients
Easy Black Olive Tapenade recipe
- 1 ½ cup sliced black olives Note 1
- 1 cup kalamata olives Note 2
- ¼ cup capers drained
- 3 cloves garlic peeled and end cut off
- 4 anchovies
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice Note 3
- ⅓ cup parsley
- ¼ cup olive oil
- Toast points to serve
Instructions
Black Olive Tapenade
- Add sliced black olives, kalamata olives, capers, garlic, anchovies, lemon juice, parsley and olive olive to the bowl of a food processor
- Blitz for 5 seconds to chop and combine
- Transfer tapenade to a serving bowl
- Serve with toast points
Notes
- Note 1 You can use sliced or pitted black olives. But don't get olives and try and remove the pits as that will take too much time!
- Note 2 Kalamata Olives are known as a black olive type. They are a deep reddy/purple in colour and have a very distinct salty flavour about them.
- Note 3 Bottled lemon juice is totally fine to use for this recipe. Don't give it a 2nd thought! x
- Note 4 I have used both curly parsley (shown in the photos) and flat leaf parsley at times for this recipe and both are perfect to use, either or, whichever you have or can get is fine!
Nutrition
Published May 9th 2020, updated 17th Jan 2021, with extra tips!
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Cathy says
Im so readyyyyy to make this recipe! OMG! Are you kidding me with this amazingness!! Cannot wait to make this recipe this weekend!
Jen says
I'm a snacking addict and this is the perfect addition to satisfy my cravings! So delicious!
Adrianne says
Great to hear your feedback, thanks Jen!