Botija olives substitutes

The best widely available match. Kalamatas are brine-cured, purple-black, soft and genuinely salty, which is the whole point of a botija, and they blend into a smooth purple paste for olive sauce.

Best for

salsa de aceitunas for tallarines, causa rellena filling, papa a la huancaina garnish, empanadas and escabeche

Kalamatas are cured with a good deal of red wine vinegar, so they read sharper and more acidic where botija reads deeper and winey-fruity. An olive sauce made with them comes out a shade redder and noticeably tangier. Rinse them, then stir a teaspoon of olive oil into the sauce to round it back out, and hold off adding any lime until you have tasted.

Wrinkled, soft, salt-cured and very concentrated, which makes these the closest structural relative to a botija even though the flavour goes in a different direction.

Best for

olive sauce and olive pastes, stuffed potato dishes, anywhere botija is the dominant flavour

These are more bitter and leathery than botija, with a slightly smoky, dried-fruit intensity, and they are much saltier per olive, which is why you use less. The sauce comes out darker and a touch drier tasting, so add an extra tablespoon of oil or a spoonful of the pasta cooking water. Taste before salting anything else in the dish.

A middle path: brine-cured and soft like a botija, but milder, so nothing about the dish gets pushed too far in any direction.

Best for

escabeche, salads and cold platters, olive sauce for someone who dislikes strong olives

Softer and fruitier than kalamata, with less vinegar bite and less salt than a botija. The dish will taste gentler and rounder, so it needs a pinch of salt added separately, which botija would have supplied on its own. Colour is a good purple-brown and closer to botija than kalamata's red-purple.

Small, soft, purple-brown olives with a clean, nutty, slightly herbal flavour, and a good option when you want the olive to sit in the background rather than take over.

Best for

escabeche de pollo, rice dishes, salads, olive garnish rather than olive sauce

Much milder and less salty than botija, so the fermented funk that makes a Peruvian olive sauce distinctive is largely absent and the dish tastes politely Mediterranean instead. They are also fiddly to pit for the volume an olive sauce needs. Best where the olives are visible pieces, not blended.

The honest emergency option. These are lye-processed, oxidised olives, not fermented ones, so they give you the right colour and the right soft bite and almost no flavour at all.

Best for

when the supermarket has nothing else, dishes where the olive is decoration, cooking for people who dislike strong olives

There is no getting around it: these taste faintly of tin and salt water and nothing like a botija. An olive sauce made from them is greyish, sweetish and flat. The salt and borrowed brine help, and a teaspoon of anchovy paste or half a teaspoon of capers per half cup adds back some of the savoury depth. If you have any other option on this list, take it.

A shortcut worth knowing for olive sauce, since half the work in a salsa de aceitunas is pitting and blending, and a good paste has already done both.

Best for

salsa de aceitunas, quick pasta sauces, spreads and dips

Read the label first, because most tapenade already contains capers, anchovy, garlic and often lemon, all of which will show up in your sauce. That is fine for tallarines but wrong for a delicate causa. Start with less than you think and do not add salt until the end, since these pastes are usually very salty.