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What’s the best olive salad for muffaletta magnificence? We tasted every olive salad we could to find the best olive salad in a jar that you can buy no matter where you live.
Every time I visit New Orleans I leave with a sandwich in my bag. Yes, I am that awful person on the plane who unwraps a messy, oily wedge of muffaletta and devours it while you are “enjoying” your complimentary bag of pretzels. And, chances are, I’m saving the rest of the giant loaf of a sandwich in my carry-on for later. It’s tough to find a great muffaletta sandwich outside of Louisiana—and it’s tough to make one at home. Sure, you can get all the same deli meats. But what about the olive salad? I think that’s really what makes a muffaletta a muffaletta.
If you’re in Louisiana or Louisiana adjacent, I’m sure you can get some really great stuff from a local company. But what about us muffaletta lovers in California or North Dakota or Iowa? So, we took it upon ourselves to find the best olive salad for muffaletta making that’s available no matter where you live. We judged each olive salad on flavor (we wanted a tangy melange of olives and capers and other pickley bits), texture (olive salad should be chopped but irregularly so, with multiple types of crunch), and oil (the oil should seep into bread and make it taste incredible). We tried each one on its own as well as on bread. And we found not one but two brands of olive salad in a jar that will help you make the best muffaletta at home—one you can buy online and the other you can probably even find at a grocery store. Here they are, the best jars of muffaletta olive salad around.
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- Central Grocery’s Olive Salad
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It comes as no surprise that Central Grocery olive salad is some of the best olive salad. Central Grocery, if you are not familiar, makes what is probably the most famous muffaletta in New Orleans and therefore the country. And you don’t have to go to Louisiana to get it—you can buy Central Grocery olive salad right off of good old Amazon. It’s extremely tasty, with a mix of black and green olives, cubed carrots, capers, and pepperoncinis. And the oil is filled with visible bits of herbs. Central Grocery olive salad is much, much more herbaceous than any of the other olive salads we tried. And that makes the oil so flavorful. It was a toss up between Central Grocery olive salad and our number one pick—but the one ding was that Central Grocery olive salad features big, big, big chunks of olive. We’re talking practically whole olives. That makes it hard to spread on a sandwich. But if you don’t mind that and you do want extra herbs, then Central Grocery olive salad is the best olive salad in a jar for you.
Credit: Liv Averett / Amazon
- Boscoli Family Olive Salad
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My colleague (and former Louisianan) Jordan Myrick hyped Boscoli olive salad up a lot—to the point where I was worried it would be able to live up to it. But it is so, so good. It’s packed with green and black olives chopped into delightfully irregular (but small enough) chunks, crunchy chopped celery, peppers, carrots, cauliflower, and capers. Each bite offers a wave of flavor, starting with the mild oil, then the crunchy vegetables, and ending on the tangy olive. It won’t steal the show, but it will add that perfect amount of flavor and texture. Boscoli olive salad is definitely the best muffaletta olive salad you can buy (and it’s actually available in grocery stores), but you’ll probably find additional ways to use it. Or just eat it straight out of the jar as a snack, like I did.
Credit: Liv Averett / Walmart
Runner-Up
Best of the Best
Other olive salad brands we tasted: Central Grocery’s Hot & Spicy Olive Salad, Aunt Sally’s Muffuletta Mix, Mezzetta Olive Salad Medium Heat, J.P. Graziano Mild Muffuletta, J.P. Graziano Hot Muffuletta
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!