I had some fantastic pimiento cheese in a biscuit from a food truck Saturday and now I want to make my own. Anyone have a favourite recipe to share?
There are lots of different variations. I use a very basic recipe. I think it’s much better with fresh-grated cheese, not pre-grated cheese in a bag. I like it with white cheddar.
8 oz. shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
1/3 cup mayonnaise
2 oz. diced pimentos, drained
2 tsp. minced onion
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
Mix all ingredients. Chill.
It’s also good on hamburgers. For sandwiches, Martin’s potato bread is absolutely the best. It’s life-changing.
Ah, Pimento cheese! The caviar of the south . . .
My grandmother taught my by the “dump and taste” method, so I have no idea of precise measurements, but I can give you the ingredients and process:
Ingredients:
sharpest cheddar that ever sharped
2 small jars pimentos
Dukes Mayo
durkees sauce
pepper
salt
Process
Go buy a whole lot of different kinds of sharp cheddar. Taste them all. When you find the one that makes all the spit in your system dry up on contact, that’s the right one.
Drain the pimentos, and dump them into a couple of paper towels, and cover with a third paper towel - kindof gently pat them a bit to get most of the moisture out.
Take 2 blocks of that cheese and grate it really coarsely. Plan on losing a good bit to the munchies and to relatives finding sudden urges to wash dishes or stack plates in the kitchen so they can steal handfuls also.
Pile the remaining shredded cheese into an oversized bowl.
Plop the pimentos in on top. Mix them gently together.
Plop in a decent amount of mayo; enough to make it wet and stirrable, but not glorpy. (Glorpy is when it just sort of sliiides off an upside-down spoon and leaves a film of orange mayo behind.) If it’s your first time, do it by spoonfulls so you don’t put in too much.
Stir it up so there aren’t any big clumps of dry cheese anywhere. If you’re really dedicated, use your hands. (ew)
Add two biig drippy serving-spoons of Durkees, and mix that in really well. It should be a bit easier to mix now. (You know the spoon is big enough if it barely fits in the bottle mouth.)
Add enough pepper that the entire top of the bowl is black, mix all that in really well.
Taste it.
Add more Durkees if you want it tarter.
Taste it again.
Repeat that process with the pepper and the Durkees until it tastes like you want it.
Once it tastes right, if it’s still not glorpy yet, plop more mayo in by spoonfulls until it’s properly oozing.
(Optional, depending on the last steps) Add a smidge of salt to make the taste pop back out through all that extra mayo you just dumped in.
Scrape your lovely creation off the bowl into a shallow tupperware and stick that in the fridge. Leave a lot behind on the bowl and mixing spoons as a reward.
Eat all that leftovers on crackers while it’s nice and fresh and sloppy and room-temperature. Feel bad for everyone who isn’t here right this instant: they have to eat it after it’s gone cold in the fridge.
(Optional, depending on your willpower and intestinal fortitude) 2 hours later, regret your life choices while everyone else eats lovely holiday food, and you are stuffed full of cheese and fats. Regret your choices even more two days later when you remember why people don’t normally eat entire blocks of cheese in one go.
I love pimento cheese.
Oh, these are excellent replies (and entertaining - I am laughing). Thanks! (Off to store!)
Since you’ve gone to the store, I thought I’d pop in and give yet another variation, thus guaranteeing you still won’t have all the ingredients you need. No need to thank me. Always glad to help. 
Pimento Cheese/ Roasted Red Pepper Cheese
Pimento Cheese is not an exact science. This is my basic recipe:
1 lb. extra sharp cheddar cheese grated.
2 small jars of diced pimentos
One smallish onion chopped fine (onion is optional)
3/4 cup mayo (I suggest startin’ with 1/2 cup and adjustin’ to taste)
Salt and Pepper to taste (Optional. I don’t add salt cause the cheese is salty enough for my taste)
Cayenne Pepper to taste (Optional but it does give it a zing)
Mash or chop pimentos. Add all other ingredients and blend until smooth and creamy. One might also just dump it all in a food processor and have at it but mixing by hand is therapeutic. What? It is! Try it! Chill for a couple of hours. Eat.
Other options include such things as adding cream cheese, which is not a bad thing but I say it’s guilding the lily. Also one might add some chopped pecans (weird but different!), minced garlic (not a bad option!) and sometimes even shudder Velveeta (GAG!!!111).
This is a variation of Pimento Cheese from a friend of mine. He uses roasted red peppers instead of pimentos and throws in a finely chopped jalapeno and blackened cajun seasonin’ along with extra sharp cheddar cheese and mayo. This is uber great and I recommend trying this for a variation of the traditional “Pimento Cheese.”
Pimento cheese is one of the rare foods that has the appearance and texture of vomit, but you don’t care.
This is basically my recipe but I like finely chopped bread and butter pickles. Just a few spoonfuls. Oh also I crumble the cheddar instead of shredding it, just because that’s how mama used to do it.
I would just add that some recipes call for adding sugar. None have been listed so far, and I personally prefer the ones without it, but some people like it. Of course, in my experience Southern restaurants typically serve tea that is sugar-sweetened so heavly that almost immediately triggers a diabetic shock.
I remember my mom has been making this before. It is best with toast!
I can assure you there will be no Velveeta in my final product! Stay tuned for taste-test updates!
As a Southerner, I feel qualified to help taste-test the resulting batches of pimento cheese. Because I’m neighborly like that!
(My recipe, now that I can’t just acquire pimento cheese by going to Publix, is very like MagicEyes’.)
GrumpyBunny, you are welcome to sample! Bring the crackers or biscuits or toast points or whatever you want to put them on!
When I was a girl, it was my “job” to make this for my dad’s lunch. I remember putting (Colby) cheese through the meat grinder, then adding pimiento, miracle whip and a spoonful of peanut butter.
This is just about the recipe I use. I add fresh ground black pepper to taste and a couple of shots of tobasco instead of cayanne.
I also use just enough mayo to bind the cheese, which turns out to be maybe a spoonful or two.
You do need to grate the cheese yourself as finely as possible. Pregrated cheese is coated with corn starch to keep it from sticking together, which is opposite of what you want.
My wife likes to spread it on sourdough pretzels, a trick she learned from our own Southern Yankee.
Getting all persnickety about pimento cheese, I confess, kind of makes me roll my eyes. No, you don’t need the World’s Sharpest Cheddar to make it. No, you don’t need Peruvian aged pimentos hand-picked by children on llamaback. Don’t make your own goddamn aioli. Basic ingredients are just fine.
That said, when I make it, I do the cream cheese variation, replacing part of the mayo with cream cheese. It gives it a firmer texture, and I only like mayo in moderation, so it helps with that.
I also sometimes add cayenne, or cumin, or garlic, or whatever else happens to sound good to me at the moment.
Finally, if you haven’t ever tried using warmed pimento cheese (until it’s just barely liquidy) as a dip, try it out. It’s amazing.
That’s interesting!
I did not know that!
I’m liking the sound of the cream cheese in these recipes - and I could totally see it as a dip. With pretzels!