5-Ingredient Olive Tapenade Recipe

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Tapenade is the salty cousin to dips and spreads like pesto, hummus, and bruschetta, often found spooned across the tops of toasted crusty bread. Powerfully tangy, salty, and briny, the paste-like spread is known for its olive base, which gives it its distinct taste and deeply purplish hue. Like pesto, tapenade is as versatile as it is flavorful, giving new, tangy life to roast salmon, whole-baked tilapia, and simple tossed pastas.

If there is any recipe you should have in your back pocket, it's tapenade — the easy, briny spread can save the day on busy weeknights or when hosting unexpected guests. Conveniently, you only need a handful of ingredients to make a great tapenade, and this five-ingredient olive tapenade recipe written with developer Michelle McGlinn is the perfect way to make use of a flavorful few. Made with just olives, parsley, oil, garlic, and a squeeze of lemon, this is the tapenade recipe that will become your go-to as a flavorful companion to all of your favorite dishes.

Because there are so few ingredients, you'll want to source high-quality versions of each as much as possible. Namely, you'll need a hefty cup of kalamata olives, the tangy, salty purple variety often associated with Mediterranean food. Be sure the olives are pitted, and if they aren't, remove the pits before blending. Next, you'll need fresh parsley, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper, as well as a nice, smooth olive oil for blending.

Add olives, garlic, lemon juice, parsley, salt, and pepper to a food processor.

Pulse to chop finely.

While pulsing, add the olive oil slowly, pausing to scrape the sides as needed. Pulse until the mixture is paste-like.

Serve the tapenade with baguette or crackers.

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Tapenade is as versatile a spread as pesto, being that it can be used as a dip, spread onto finished dishes, or baked into meat and veggies. Tapenade is traditionally spread on crusty bread and eaten as an appetizer, or in countries like France, dolloped onto pizza slices as a salty topping. Tapenade can also be served with crackers and raw vegetables as a flavorful crudite dip. You can also use tapenade to flavor other prepared dips, spooning a little into hummus or spreading over baked feta as a boost of briney flavor.

Tapenade is also useful for cooked applications. It can be used to marinate chicken and beef, and also used as a coating for white fish and salmon before roasting. Roasting tapenade mellows the flavor, though the salty taste will remain as a punchy addition to your food. Tapenade can also be tossed into pasta as an alternative to sauce, or spread onto sandwiches (such as a muffuletta) for a tangy bite of flavor.

Tapenade has European origins, and the version we're most familiar with specifically hails from Provençal, France where the word tapeno translates to capers. As such, capers were originally the main ingredient of classic tapenade. Over time, the recipe gradually became olive-dominant, eventually becoming the purple-hued spread we associate with tapenade today. In our recipe, capers are left out altogether, leaning heavily on kalamata olives for flavor. Capers, and a few other ingredients, can be added back in for even deeper umami flavor, though.

Besides capers, which can be added in any amount, you can also add green olives (think Castrovalano) or even a few black olives. Another traditional ingredient found in tapenades is anchovies, which intensifies the salty flavor. You can also instead make your tapenade more herby, adding basil, thyme, rosemary, or even tarragon. To add a layer of spice, consider adding red pepper flakes or a pinch of paprika. For an unexpected sweet flavor, consider adding figs to your tapenade. And for just a kick of tang to balance the salty caper-olive brine, try adding a hint of Dijon mustard.

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