Olives are one of my favourite things for snacking and these Christmas spiced mixed olives are packed with amazing flavour and the perfect festive treat.
I love olives, always have, even as a little girl I was into these slightly bitter almost meaty little bites. While my brother would pinch the sweet pickled onions from the party platters at Christmas and New Year, I would be sneaking the olives off the plate.
Black or green, stuffed or pitted, I loved them all and still do and I simply adore these Christmas Spiced Olives.
Spiced olives
While I will gladly eat all olives that cross my path I do have favourites. I adore spiced olives in oil.
The combination of flavours, the little extra bite of fruit, the extra dimension of colour, scent and texture. It is all a case of more, more, more, adding to what is already good to make it even better.
There is a drawback to such culinary goodness, the price. Spiced olives can be kind of pricey and downright hurtful to the pocket if you buy them in delis and supermarkets.
But of course, you don’t have to. You can make them yourself for a fraction of the cost.
Ingredients
These Christmas spiced olives don’t have a lot of ingredients. In fact at this time of year you’ve probably got most of them luring around in the kitchen already.
Olives both black and green. In fact any type of olives you have to hand really. I’ve just used a tin a black olives and a tin of green ones.
Fresh rosemary, a clementine (after-all nothing says Christmas more than festive clementines. A small dried red chilli pepper or some dried chilli flakes for a nice kick of fire.
Garlic and of course olive oil.
How to make these
I made these Christmas Spiced Olives for the last minute Gift Hamper I made for the MacAulay & Co Show on BBC Radio Scotland last week. They are oh so easy to make, really an assembly job rather than a recipe.
- Drain the olives from their brine and rinse. Pat dry.
- Pack olives into a wide-mouthed sterilised jar
- Blanch the clementine in boiling water for 5 minutes to soften the skin , cut in half as we only need half of the fruit then slice into small pieces
- Add the chilli, peppercorns and rosemary, clementine pieces and the garlic cloves
- Pour over enough olive oil to fill the jar covering everything.
- Pop on a lid. Keep in fridge, use after 24 hours.
How long will these keep?
They will keep for up to 6 months unopened. Once opened store in the fridge and use within a month.
How to serve these spiced olives
Just add these to an antipasti platter or cheeseboard for your next party.
These spiced olives are great added to a pizza or to top a simple bowl of pasta.
Add them to bruschetta or just top off a toasted cheese sandwich with some of these super tasty spiced olives.
Now I had better go and organise all my jars of olives and other goodies in the larder and get them ready for gifting…..
Looking for more super easy ideas for foodie gofts for Christmas? Then check these out before you go;
Sugar free oat and nut snowballs
Figgy pudding fruit paste for cheeseboard
Super easy lemon and ginger curd
This recipe and another 50 are available in my Ebook Naughty And Nice Edible Gifts For Christmas.
Finally, if you do try this recipe don’t forget to leave a comment/star rating below as I just love to hear from readers. Want more Larder Love? Then follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter and sign up for my newsletter too of course.
Christmas Spiced Olives
Ingredients
- 1 cup green olives
- 1 cup black olives
- 1 sprig rosemary
- 1 clementine small
- 1 dried chilli small dried red chilli pepper or ½ teaspoon dried chilli flakes
- 6 black peppercorns
- 2 cloves garlic
- Olive oil t
Instructions
- Here’s how to make your own Christmas Spiced Olives;
- Drain the olives from their brine and rinse. Pat dry.
- Pack olives into a wide mouthed sterilised jar
- Blanch the clementine in boiling water for 5 minutes to soften the skin , cut in half as we only need half of the fruit then slice into small pieces
- Add the chilli, peppercorns and rosemary, clementine pieces and the garlic cloves
- Pour over enough olive oil to fill the jar covering everything.
- Pop on a lid. Keep in fridge, use after 24 hours.
Oh no!!
Olives ….. the one and only food that I have had to spit out in public …. YUK, YUK and treble YUK. Sorry, I can’t do olives, you can have them all.
I have never had spiced olives, so I made these, and they were just beautiful…..but
after I put them in the refrigerator, the oil solidified. Is this supposed to happen, or
do I take them out of the frige after 2 days, and leave them out?
They taste good, but the oil is kind of ugly looking.
Oil will always solidify in cold temperatures. It will quickly go back to liquid form at room temperature.
K x
olive Christmas gifts
how to prepare gifts so refrigeration is not required
and keep longer 3or4 months
I keep my olives in the fridge so three months is fine. Don’t preserve them for longer, sorry.
Do you remove the peel from the clementine ?
Hi Shanon,
No, you are blanching to soften the skin ‘Blanch the clementine in boiling water for 5 minutes to soften the skin , cut in half as we only need half of the fruit then slice into small pieces’ you just follow recipe and use skin too
K