Olive recommendations please...

[FrayedKnot]

Can anyone suggest a brand of pitted black olives that don;t taste like plastic (and available in your common or garden supermarket)?

DS has gone olive crazy for some reason, but obviously they need to be pitted.

DD is olive mad too - but only green! Not sure if they taste that much different (I don't eat them myself). It doesn't seem to matter to her what the brand etc - so I but her morrisons own!

Pitted black olives tend to be cheap green olives dyed black. Why not buy some decent ones and pit them yourself?

A lot of supermarkets sell them from the deli counters and they can be very good. Also buy the ones in oil -they tend to be nicer.

Our DD and DS have always loved olives from an early age too!

There are very few pitted olives that taste of anything other than the brine. I suspect that lower-quality olives are used for pitting. The only exceptions I ever find are sometimes the stuffed olives you get on deli counters (Tesco best, Waitrose 2nd best) especially those stuffedc with something other than pimento. Garlic, almond, lemon can all be decent.

I would say invest in an olive pitter and get him decent olives, preferably from an ethnic shop.

BTW how old is he? My 5yo has just learned to pit olives in his mouth, and loves practicing and displaying this skill - takes forever ATM though!

DD3 loves "olibs" and I tend to by the crappy black pitted ones too but when I have the time for slicing the flesh off the stone of decent kalamatas, she loves them too.

DD3 is 2.10 and has just learned to spit out the stone from a cherry but olive stones tend to be a tad sharp don't they?

No PC he's only 2, he would choke!

I have got a cherry pitter somewhere, perhaps that would work. Not sure if I would be bothered though!

I want to use them for cooking really - pizza, chicken with tomato & olives etc - for eating on their own I would buy green ones.