Pimento-Green Olive Cheese Spread
Learn how to make delicious Southern-style pimento cheese, with pimento-stuffed green olives.
Pimento cheese is one Southern recipe that the rest of the country needs to adopt.
Why?
Because it’s a cheese and dip in one! It’s full of flavor, and can be enjoyed in SO many ways (see below for ideas).
If you haven’t tried pimento cheese before, this is your sign.
This recipe calls for green olives stuffed with pimentos (the cheap green olives found in every grocery store). If you want the traditional pimento cheese, use straight pimentos instead of green olives stuffed with pimentos.
How To Serve Pimento Cheese
How should this pimento-green olive cheese spread be eaten? Here are my favorite ways:
- Served as a dip, along with homemade pita chips or homemade bagel chips, and fresh veggie slices
- Spread on top of celery slices
- Serve on a charcuterie board
- Used as a sandwich spread (make the best BLT sandwich ever!)
- Used as a base for homemade mac & cheese
- Used as a burger topping
- Used as a filling for jalapeno poppers (Slice jalapenos in half and remove seeds. Fill each half with pimento cheese. Broil for 2 to 3 minutes.)
- Used on tuna melts (spread pimento cheese directly on bread, or place on top of tuna before baking)
What Kind Of Cheese Is Used To Make Pimento Cheese?
Use a block of cheddar cheese instead of buying a bag of shredded cheese. Here’s why:
- The cheese should be finely shredded (using the fine blades on any cheese grater). Most packaged shredded cheese is more coarsely shredded.
- Packaged shredded cheese usually has extra ingredients to prevent caking (like cellulose powder, potato starch, and calcium sulfate). These extra ingredients are not needed for this recipe.
Also, use mild cheddar cheese for this recipe. I find sharp cheddar cheese flavor to be too strong for such a concentrated dip.
Pimento-Green Olive Cheese Spread
This makes a big batch (almost 4 cups). Feel free to half it for a smaller batch.
Ingredients
- 1 lb block mild cheddar cheese
- 1/3 cup mayonnaise
- 1/2 cup softened cream cheese (or cottage cheese, in a pinch)
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- Hot sauce, to taste
- 2/3 cup pimento-stuffed green olives, sliced
Instructions
- Use a fine grater to grate the block of cheese.
- Mix cheese with mayonnaise, cream cheese, garlic powder, and hot sauce.
- Gently fold green olives into cheese mixture.
- The cheese spread is ready to eat now - and can be refrigerated for up to 5 days.
Great recipe, easy and so good! Of course common sense allows me to know where to incorporate the cream cheese, but to perfect the instructions of your recipe you need to include that step. Thank you, I’ll be using this recipe over and over!
Oops! Thanks for your comment – the recipe has been updated.