Why olives belong in the pan, not just the bowl

Most of us keep a jar of olives in the fridge for picking at with a drink, and then forget about them when it comes to actual cooking. That is a shame, because olives are one of the hardest-working ingredients in a savoury kitchen. A handful, roughly chopped and thrown into a pan, does three jobs at once: it seasons, it adds richness, and it gives texture.

Think of them less as a garnish and more as a condiment you can cook with. Their saltiness means you can often pull back on added salt elsewhere in a dish. Their deep, faintly bitter savouriness does similar work to anchovy or a crust of parmesan, building layers of flavour without shouting. And unlike a lot of soft, slow-cooked ingredients, olives keep a firm bite, which is exactly what a tray of roasted vegetables or a bowl of pasta needs.

Once you get into the habit, you will find yourself reaching for the jar the way you reach for lemon or black pepper.

Choosing, pitting and prepping

Any olive you enjoy eating on its own will cook well, but the type changes the result. Kalamata and other dark Greek olives are soft, winey and slightly smoky, and they melt into sauces. Green olives — Nocellara, Castelvetrano-style, the big firm ones — are crisper and more buttery, and hold their shape beautifully in traybakes and stuffings. Dry-cured black olives are intensely salty, so use them sparingly and taste as you go. If you have a deli nearby, buy a small tub of something unfamiliar and try it in a simple dish first.

Pitting is the only real chore. The quickest method is to lay the olive on a board and press down firmly with the flat of a chef's knife until it splits, then pick out the stone. A cherry pitter works if you have one, and so does pressing with your thumb. Do not worry about ragged shapes — rough edges catch sauce better than neat rings.

• Rinse very salty olives under cold water and pat dry before frying, or they will spit in hot oil.
• Chop coarsely. A fine paste loses the texture that makes olives worth adding.
• Keep jarred olives covered in their brine in the fridge; oil-packed ones keep a little longer.

Pasta and quick sauces

This is where olives earn their keep on a weeknight. A puttanesca built on garlic, chilli, tinned tomatoes and a good handful of chopped black olives takes twenty minutes and tastes like it took two hours. Add the olives with the tomatoes so they soften and season the sauce from within.

For something lighter, warm a slug of olive oil, soften a sliced onion, add two crushed cloves of garlic and a pinch of dried oregano, then tip in a tin of chopped tomatoes and 100g of chopped green olives. Simmer for fifteen minutes, season, and toss through rigatoni with a spoonful of the pasta water to loosen it. A finish of lemon zest, chopped parsley and toasted breadcrumbs turns it into something you would happily serve to guests.

If you want olives to keep their bite, add them in the last two minutes instead. Both approaches are right — it just depends on whether you want them to disappear into the sauce or stand out in it.

Traybakes, roasting and one-pan cooking

Oven cooking suits olives enormously, but timing matters. Heat concentrates their salt and can make them leathery, so add them partway through rather than at the start.

Try chicken thighs roasted with new potatoes, lemon wedges, garlic cloves and a scattering of oregano. Roast at 200°C (fan 180°C) for about 40 minutes, then scatter 100g of olives over the top and return to the oven for a final 15 minutes, until they blister and the potatoes are golden. The olives drip their oil and brine into the potatoes, which is the whole point.

The same trick works with salmon or cod fillets, cherry tomatoes and a few capers in a shallow dish: 12 minutes at 200°C, olives added halfway. An aubergine and courgette traybake benefits too, especially with a spoonful of harissa and a squeeze of lemon at the end. One caution: keep olives away from a fierce grill, where they will char before anything else is ready.

Stuffings, meatballs and pastry

Olives are superb in anything that needs moistening and lifting. A sausage and olive stuffing — breadcrumbs, softened onion, sage, chopped green olives, lemon zest and a little butter — is far better than it has any right to be, and it works just as well rolled into balls and baked alongside a roast.

Chopped green olives mixed through pork mince with fennel seed and garlic make excellent meatballs; the olives keep the meat juicy and season it from the inside. The same idea applies to stuffed peppers, or chicken breasts slit and filled with a rough paste of olives, sun-dried tomatoes and cream cheese.

For something quick, layer chopped olives, feta and a little tomato into filo triangles and bake until crisp. Olives and pastry are natural allies: the salt cuts through the butter.

Salads, dressings and a few rules of thumb

In salads, olives do the work of both seasoning and dressing. A tomato salad with thinly sliced red onion, a handful of Kalamata olives, oregano and red wine vinegar needs nothing else. Warm new potatoes with green beans and chopped olives, dressed while still hot, is a brilliant summer lunch. And if you blitz 100g of olives with four tablespoons of olive oil, a tablespoon of vinegar and a small garlic clove, you have a rough tapenade that doubles as a dressing for anything green.

Keep these in mind:

• Add olives early for depth, late for bite.
• Taste before salting the dish — olives vary enormously in saltiness.
• Pair them with something bright: lemon, vinegar, fresh herbs or citrus zest.
• A little goes a long way; 75–100g will lift a dish serving four.
• Buy better olives than you think you need. Cheap ones taste of brine and little else.