Cheese has always been my favorite food. If I had to choose between cheese and chocolate, I would choose cheese (and I love chocolate). However, I was unaware of pimento cheese for most of my life.
When I was in my twenties, I moved to Tennessee for college and suddenly I discovered this savory spread. It was everywhere. People were making it at home and it was already available in almost every grocery store.
I quickly realized that I was born to love this food. It’s creamy. It’s salty. It’s colorful.
Pimiento cheese is starting to appear in New England grocery stores, but most Yankees don’t eat much of it.
For Southerners, it is a staple food. North Carolina novelist Reynolds Price (1933-2011) called it “the peanut butter of (his) childhood, homemade by mother.” It is also called Carolina caviar or Southern pâté.
Interestingly, although pimento cheese is associated with the South, where many people omit the Spanish-inspired second “i” and call it “pimento cheese,” it originated in New York City in the early 1900s.
According to an article by Robert Moss in “Serious Eats,” pimento cheese originated as “a product of industrial food manufacturing and mass marketing.”
He argues that cheese is the result of the marriage of two recently developed industrial products, cream cheese and canned Spanish red peppers. This union was celebrated by practitioners of the new science of home economics, who loved processed foods.
Spreads that combined the two were marketed throughout the United States, not just the South. Pimento cheese became even more popular when Georgia farmers began growing and canning their own chiles, bypassing the more expensive and rarer Spanish chiles.
“After World War II,” Moss writes, “the popularity of pimento cheese began to decline…
“But somewhere along the way, Southern cooks took what was originally an industrial food product and started creating their own recipes to make it from scratch, transforming it into something truly delicious, very closely associated with the South.”
There are many versions of pimento cheese. My friend Lark Fleury, who lives in Alabama, adds finely chopped or grated onion. Some people, including Stacey Little of the popular food blog Southern Bite, take inspiration from the spread’s origins by including softened cream cheese in the mix.
Almost every recipe contains mayonnaise. Most Southerners will tell you that their favorite mayonnaise is Duke’s.
Indeed, founder Eugenia Duke of South Carolina began selling her mayonnaise commercially only after her chili cheese, egg salad and chicken salad sandwiches became popular in army mess halls during World War I.
She was told that the secret to her sandwiches’ success was the homemade mayonnaise she used. She decided to make her own mayonnaise instead of making thousands of sandwiches a day.
With all due respect to Duke, who was a pioneering industrialist and (as you might expect) a very good cook, I use Hellmann’s mayonnaise, the one from my youth. I leave the onion alone, which tends to overwhelm the other flavors in the batter after a few hours.
I vary my preparation from time to time. Sometimes I just mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Sometimes I completely pulverize the cheese mixture to get a uniform consistency and color. It depends on my mood.
My other variation is in the spices. For me, there are always spices. (If you don’t like spicy food, feel free to omit them.) Sometimes I put a little chopped fresh jalapeño pepper in my spread. (You can also use pickled peppers in place of fresh peppers. They respect the origins of the dish in commercial kitchens.)
Sometimes I opt for chipotle canned in adobo. I love chipotles, which are actually smoked jalapeños. The smoke adds flavor, but (unless you put too much of it in the chipotles) it doesn’t overpower.
Pimiento cheese is a delicious, easy-to-make appetizer. Or a delicious sandwich. Southerners have found many ways to use it: stuffing deviled eggs, in macaroni and cheese, in a zesty cheeseburger, and more. Feel free to experiment.
Note: While you can definitely use pre-chopped canned peppers, it’s best to avoid buying pre-shredded cheddar cheese. This product contains ingredients that prevent the cheese from clumping together, which you don’t want or need.
Just use a box grater to grate the cheese yourself. It doesn’t take long.
Cheese spread
Ingredients:
4 ounces roasted red peppers, drained (reserve 1 tablespoon liquid) and finely chopped (if you really liked roasted red peppers, use more, up to twice as much!)
1 to 2 chipotles en adobo, seeded if you like them mild, chopped; OR 1 to 2 jalapeño peppers, still seeded if you like them mild, chopped several turns of the pepper mill
1 tablespoon red pepper brine
1 to 2 teaspoons adobo sauce from the can of chipotle (if using chipotles)
1/2 pound sharp cheddar cheese, coarsely grated (use really good cheddar, it makes a difference)
mayonnaise to taste (start with 1 tablespoon)
Instructions:
If you want a smooth mixture, place the chiles, chipotles or jalapeños, pepper, brine, and adobo sauce (if using) in a mini food processor. Pulse until well combined. Add the cheese and pulse again. Add mayonnaise to taste. (You won’t need much; try to use no more than 1/4 cup.)
If you want a little more texture, simply mix all the ingredients except the mayonnaise in a bowl. Add a little mayonnaise at a time until you have a nice paste.
Let the cheese mixture cool for at least 1/2 hour. Serve with crackers or veggies, or use your pimento cheese as a sandwich spread. (This makes delicious tea sandwiches.)
Makes a little over a cup of pimento cheese.
Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning cookbook author and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.
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