Pimento Cheese Mac and Cheese

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Pimento Cheese Mac and Cheese take a bechamel and adds the southern favorite cheese spread. It makes for a delicious macaroni and cheese with a creamy and salty kick.

When my sister was getting married and getting ready to move on to her new life, Dad and I decided to make a family cookbook. Deciding what to put in there was not the easiest thing in the world to do. We cooked a lot as a family. I mean, A LOT! And there were some favorites that we didn’t make often and some that we made all the time.

Then we grappled with how to organize it. What recipe goes under what category. It was a fun project. For us to work on as a family. Some of the recipes weren’t written down at all. Like Nana’s chicken and dumplings. And unfortunately, we couldn’t travel to see her make them. It was way too close to the wedding for us to do that. And, well, she couldn’t make it while she was here for the wedding. There wasn’t time enough to do all that and get it into the cookbook.

But recipes like Nana’s pimento cheese, potato pancakes, and corn pudding are in there. Those are three of my favorites. And her hot pepper jelly! I really need to make another batch soon. I’m almost out of it. And I need to make another batch of her pimento cheese. I use the batch I made for this recipe and one other I’ll share soon.

What is pimento cheese?

Pimento cheese is a Southern recipe. It’s a pretty simple recipe consisting of cheese, mayonnaise, and pimentos. In the case of Nana’s recipe, she adds some green olives to hers. I love that added brine flavor. There are other regional ingredients like adding hot sauce in Louisiana or evaporated milk and butter in the Philippines.

Pimento cheese can be many things. It can top crackers, be a dip for veggies, but in our house, it’s a sandwich spread. I have fond memories of going fishing with Dad and Nana. Pimento cheese sandwiches are a must when fishing. They’re delicious, simple, and a great treat for a day fishing on the river or the lake.

Who invented pimento cheese?

I’m not quite sure the who, but the how is all about American industrial food manufacturing and mass marketing. The creation of a new cheese product and the import of a Spanish ingredient is how this delicious spread got started. And it’s not in the place you thought it was.

In Upstate New York, dairy farmers started to create a creamy cheese to mimic the French Neufchatel cheese. A few decades later, in the late 1800’s, they mixed this Neufchatel cheese curd with cream to introduce our present-day cream cheese. It wasn’t very popular at first, but one man pivotal in its creation branded it as Philadelphia Cream Cheese. That’s when its popularity skyrocketed.

While Philadelphia didn’t invent or event make cream cheese at the time, it acquired the name for pure marketing. Philadelphia was a food hub so it was only natural that the city’s name be used to market this new cheese. The demand surpassed the supply, and many other dairy farms joined the coalition making this popular cheese.

Of course, the other ingredient in this cheese spread is Spanish pimentos. Spain started sending their canned pimientos to the US. They were sweet, delicious, and became a popular item in the kitchen because of their delicate flavor. Green peppers are great, but they can be a bit bitter. The red pimientos were complex and delicious in flavor.

The introduction of these two ingredients at roughly the same time meant they were destined to be together. And it was Domestic Scientists that combined them into a spread. You know Domestic Scientists, right? We used to call it Home Economics. This women-led movement pioneered the science of keeping a home, setting a table, and creating a meal.

How did pimento cheese become a Southern tradition?

It’s all about the pimentos. In the early 1900’s, Georgia started cultivating pimentos because of the popularity of the Spanish imports. They created a hearty crop and even invented a roasting machine for their pimentos. This, combined with the pimento cheese boom, still wasn’t enough to make is a Southern staple.

After a while, the popularity of pimento cheese waned. New products were invented, recipes created, and life moved on after WWI and WWII. But the pimento cheese recipe held in the south. People started creating their own recipes for the delicious spread.

When the Depression hit, people didn’t have a lot of money to buy manufactured items like pre-packaged pimento cheese. But adults at that time looked fondly on the cheese spread sandwiches served up as kids. So, they started making their own version. However cream cheese wasn’t easily available. Remember, no pre-packaged ingredients.

They started using a hoop cheese. This cheese is a white, semi-firm cheese made from the whey of cottage cheese that is pressed into molds. Hoop cheese sold in stores in the south for around 40 cents a pound. A 5 ounces jar of pimento cheese was 25 cents.

You see where I’m going with this. To make their best proximation of pimento cheese with what is readily available meant this hoop cheese replaced the cream cheese. Cheddar cheese eventually replaces the hoop in when it starts showing up in the grocery.

What does Pimento Cheese Mac and Cheese taste like?

Like rich and delicious macaroni and cheese with flecks of sweet pimentos and briny green olives. I used a sharp Cheddar cheese to play off the brine flavor. I think it really makes a difference in this macaroni and cheese. You can really taste the cheese!

I topped the macaroni and cheese with more cheddar and more pimento cheese. I really like how the pimento cheese melted on top of this pimento cheese mac and cheese. I thought it might sort of sit in piles on top, but it didn’t! It completely melted onto the macaron and cheese. And makes this cheesy crust that is perfectly delicious!

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