Green Olive Tapenade: A salty, garlicky snack or appetizer. Like my mixed Olive Tapenade, this Green Olive Tapenade Recipe takes ten minutes to whip up and is make ahead easy! It’s delicious on its own as an appetizer or with other recipes. Enjoy it as a condiment, dip, or spread! This recipe is vegetarian, vegan + gluten-free. [ watch VIDEO on recipe card below ]

Green Olive Tapenade Recipe in a bowl with crostini.

Versatile and Easy Green Olive Tapenade

A no fuss, simple recipe you’ll make over and over again! It’s always the first to go on cheese boards, party platters, and snack tables. It’s also perfectly suitable on its own with crackers or crusty baguette and a glass of wine. Green olive recipes make the tastiest appetizers!

This Recipe Is

make ahead ready
garlicky, lemony, and buttery
can be enjoyed as a condiment or appetizer

There are a variety of olive tapenades sold commercially, but making your own means you control flavor and salt. Also, using quality olives and olive oil makes a big difference in flavor.

About the Key Ingredients

Green Olives: Use two varieties for this green tapenade; ripe green olives and castelvetrano olives. Ripe green olives will be in cans, pitted. They’re buttery and mild. Castelvetrano olives are usually in glass jars, pitted, and unpitted. I find pitted castelvetrano to be convenient, but they are spendy and can be hard to find. They have a buttery, mild, sweetish flavor and are delicious!

Capers: Traditionally, tapenade includes anchovies. However, to keep this recipe vegetarian and vegan, I make green olive tapenade recipe without anchovy fillets opting for capers instead. They’re a perfect stand-in for that briny/salty flavor anchovies are known for.

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How to Make Green Olive Tapenade

Green tapenade in a work bowl of a food processor, before processing. — 1. add all the ingredients to the work bowl of a food processor.

This tapenade recipe is salty due to the capers and olives; however, for a lower-salt recipe, rinse the olives and capers before processing, then add salt to taste.

Green tapenade in a work bowl of a food processor, after processing. — 2. process to desired consistency.

Green Olive Tapenade Preparation Tips

Depending on how you plan to serve green tapenade, there are varying ways to process the ingredients in a food processor to achieve the desired textural outcome. Also, adding more olive oil while processing will create a creamier tapenade.

Green Olive Paste – keep the food processor running until the ingredients are broken down enough so that a paste forms. Add additional olive oil if needed.
Green Olive Spread – this is similar to how you’ll prepare green olive paste. You’ll want the ingredients fine enough to make them spreadable, but not quite as fine as a paste.
Green Olive Relish – chunkier than the variations mentioned above, relish spends less time in the food processor using the processor pulse function rather than allowing the processor to run.

Olive Tapenade Serving Suggestions

I love having tapenade on hand in the fridge for a quick snack or to use it as part of another recipe. Here are some ideas:

With Crackers – scoop with your favorite crackers or make homemade Sourdough Discard Crackers!
On Pizza – I dollop it on top after I add the last layer of cheese, before baking.
Cheese Board – share with your favorite cheeses on a cheese board with crackers or crostini. Tapenade is tasty with whipped feta, mascarpone, cream cheese and burrata cheese! It’s lovely served with orange marmalade or fig spread.
On Hummus – share as a relish (chunky) on top of hummus.
Stuff It into Sourdough Pita Bread with hummus and veggies like cucumbers and tomatoes.
Green Olive Spread for bread makes a tasty appetizer on crostini or slather it on an epic Italian Pressed Sandwich.

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