Green Olives substitute

Best substitute

Capers or Caper Berries

Use 2 tsp drained capers for every ¼ cup chopped green olives

Best for puttanesca

Taste and texture differ

Brined flower buds of the caper bush. Drain, and chop the larger ones roughly so they distribute the way olive pieces would.

Other green olives substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Kalamata or Other Black Brine-Cured Olives
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount
Purple-black brine-cured olives, pitted and roughly chopped or left whole depending on the recipe.
What changes
Best for
braises, chicken with olives, pasta, salads, tapenade, stews
The easiest and most available swap, and in any cooked dish it is a good one. The differences are real but forgivable: black brine-cured olives are riper, so they taste fruitier, winier and slightly sweeter with far less of green olive's crisp bitterness, and they are noticeably softer so they collapse into a braise instead of holding their shape. Your dish will also look darker, which matters in something pale like a chicken with olives and lemon. In a martini or a stuffed olive tray, this is the wrong olive.
3Cornichons or Dill Pickles, Chopped
Different taste
Use the same amount by volume, drained and blotted
Chop small, drain properly, and press between kitchen paper so the extra brine does not water down a dressing or a sandwich spread.
What changes
Best for
muffuletta, olive salad, relish, potato salad, tartare sauce, charcuterie boards
This is a genuine winner in cold dishes and a poor idea in hot ones. In a muffuletta olive salad or a relish it gives you the identical salty crunch and acidic bite, and most people will not question it. The tell is flavour direction: cucumber pickles bring vinegar, dill and garlic where green olives bring fruit and bitterness, so anything Mediterranean and simmered will taste distinctly of a delicatessen instead. Use three quarters as much and add a little olive oil to put some of the fat back.
4Pepperoncini or Pickled Banana Peppers
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount drained and sliced
Mild pickled peppers from a jar, stems removed and sliced into rings or chopped.
What changes
Best for
Italian salads, muffuletta, sandwiches, antipasto, pizza, Greek salad
Very good in cold Mediterranean-adjacent dishes, because they are salty, tangy and pleasantly bitter around the skin, and they bring a low background heat that most people read as a plus. They are much softer than a firm green olive, closer to slippery than snappy, and slightly sweeter, so a salad made with them loses the firm bite that punctuates a plate. In a cooked braise they turn to mush; add them off the heat.
5Castelvetrano or Other Mild Green Olives, With Added Salt
Different taste
Use the same amount plus a pinch of salt or 1 tsp caper brine per ¼ cup
The bright green buttery Sicilian olive, or any mild green olive such as Cerignola or Picholine, pitted and used as the recipe directs.
What changes
Best for
salads, antipasto, roast chicken, pasta, eating plain, cheese boards
If what your recipe wanted was the sharp salty Manzanilla-type olive and what you have is a mild one, you are almost there but not quite. Castelvetrano is markedly less salty, less bitter and noticeably buttery and sweet, with a softer, more yielding flesh. A puttanesca made with it comes out oddly gentle and undersalted. A pinch of salt or a spoonful of caper brine restores the seasoning, and a squeeze of lemon puts back some of the missing bite.
6Artichoke Hearts in Brine, Chopped
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount drained and chopped, plus ¼ tsp salt per ½ cup
Jarred or canned artichoke hearts, drained hard, patted dry and chopped to olive-sized pieces.
What changes
Best for
pasta, salads, sandwiches, pizza, cooking for people who dislike olives
The obvious choice when the reason you are substituting is that someone at the table hates olives. Artichokes give you body, a mild tang and a soft vegetal bitterness that reads as broadly Mediterranean. What they do not give you is salt, and that is the main thing green olives contribute, so you must season deliberately or the dish will taste flat and slightly sweet. Texture is tender rather than firm.
7Cocktail Onion or Lemon Twist (for a martini garnish)
Taste and texture differ
Use 1 to 3 onions, or one wide strip of lemon zest, for every drink
Swap the garnish rather than pretending to replace it.
What changes
A pickled pearl onion turns a martini into a Gibson; a lemon twist turns it into a twist martini.
Best for
martinis, Gibsons, cocktail garnishes, Bloody Marys
This is the honest answer for a drink: nothing substitutes for a green olive in a martini, because the olive is contributing a specific salty bitter-green aroma and a savoury edge to the vermouth that nothing else copies. A cocktail onion is savoury and sharp and makes an excellent, historically legitimate drink that tastes different rather than worse. A lemon twist takes the drink in the opposite direction, bright and aromatic instead of savoury. A caper berry is the closest thing to a true stand-in.

What is Green Olives?

Green Olives is Green olives are olives picked before they ripen and then cured in salt brine, which leaves them firm and snappy, briskly salty and faintly bitter, and includes the familiar Spanish Manzanilla, queen and Castelvetrano types.

Cooking tips

Green olives are almost always doing three jobs at once: salt, acid and a firm bite, with a little bitterness underneath. Work out which one your recipe actually needs. In a chicken braise it is mostly salt and savour, so capers work. In an olive salad or a muffuletta it is mostly crunch, so pickles work. In a martini it is the aroma, and that is the one nothing replaces.
The distinction most cooks get wrong is brine-cured against oil-cured or dry-cured. Brine-cured olives, which is nearly all green olives, are wet, plump and firm with moderate salt. Oil-cured and salt-cured olives are wrinkled, dark, chewy and several times more intense. They are not interchangeable one for one. If you are reaching for oil-cured olives in place of green ones, use half the quantity and taste before adding any more salt to the dish.
Stuffed olives are not neutral. A pimiento-stuffed Manzanilla brings a sweet red pepper note and extra moisture, and garlic- or blue cheese-stuffed olives bring rather more than that. If the recipe says plain green olives, either dig the stuffing out or expect the dish to read sweeter and busier than intended.
Add olives late to anything simmering. Twenty minutes before the end is plenty. Long cooking leaches their salt into the sauce, turns the flesh mealy and can make the whole pot faintly bitter. This is the single most common mistake in chicken-with-olives recipes.
If olives are too salty for a dish, soak them in cool water for twenty to thirty minutes, changing the water once, then drain and pat dry. This pulls out a surprising amount of salt without softening them much, and it is far better than trying to correct an oversalted sauce later.
Curing your own olives is a salt-and-acid dependent process, so use a tested recipe and do not reduce the salt or the vinegar to suit your taste, and treat any home-cured batch as a refrigerator product rather than shelf-stable. The National Center for Home Food Preservation publishes tested methods worth following exactly.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just leave green olives out?

It depends how central they are. In a mixed salad, a pizza or an antipasto plate, yes, and nobody will notice much beyond a small loss of salt. In a dish named after them, such as chicken with green olives and lemon, a puttanesca or a tapenade, no, because they are the backbone of the flavour and the result will taste bland and slightly sweet. In those cases use capers instead, which are the closest thing to a drop-in.

Are green and black olives actually different olives?

Usually the same fruit at different stages. Green olives are picked unripe, which is why they are firm and a little bitter. Black olives are the same variety left to ripen, which makes them softer, fruitier and less bitter. The exception is the very soft, uniformly dull-black canned olive common in the United States, which is a green olive ripened chemically with oxygen and iron salts, and it tastes much milder than either.

Can I use olive brine instead of olives?

For seasoning, often yes. A tablespoon or two of brine gives you the salt and the savoury olive aroma in a dressing, a sauce or a martini, and it is the whole point of a dirty martini. What it cannot do is provide any texture, so it is no help in a salad, a tapenade or anywhere you wanted something to bite. Also remember the brine is very salty, so cut other salt accordingly.

How much salt do green olives actually add?

Enough that you should season the dish afterwards rather than before. A quarter cup of chopped brine-cured green olives contributes roughly as much salt as a quarter to a half teaspoon of table salt, depending on the brand. This is why recipes with olives, capers or anchovies so often say to taste for salt at the end, and why substituting a mild olive such as Castelvetrano can leave a dish tasting underseasoned.

Which green olive should I buy if I only buy one jar?

Pitted Manzanilla or a generic Spanish green olive in brine. They are firm, properly salty and mildly bitter, which is the profile most recipes assume when they simply say green olives, and they are the standard cocktail olive as well. Castelvetrano is more delicious to eat straight from the jar but is too mild and buttery to carry a cooked dish on its own.

Related substitutes

More fermented substitutes

Green Olives substitute

Other green olives substitutes

2Kalamata or Other Black Brine-Cured Olives

3Cornichons or Dill Pickles, Chopped

4Pepperoncini or Pickled Banana Peppers

5Castelvetrano or Other Mild Green Olives, With Added Salt

6Artichoke Hearts in Brine, Chopped

7Cocktail Onion or Lemon Twist (for a martini garnish)