Pimento Cheese is a Southern Classic…

… and my mother, Nancy Feagin, made the absolute best!

It seems lately that pimento cheese is experiencing a renaissance so I thought I would share her recipe with you but first, a few basics. My mom always talked about the fine art of making pimento cheese and she pronounced it “pimen’r n cheese” as many southerners do. Among other things, she always said there were two critical steps to getting it right: always use a high-quality mayonnaise like Duke’s (no, they are not paying me) and always use two different cheeses, a sharp and a mild or else “the pimento cheese will lack depth.” Those two cheeses had to be, without exception, Red Rind Hoop Cheese for the mild and Black Rind Hoop Cheese for the sharp. While these cheeses hail from the great state of Wisconsin, the dish is uniquely southern as far as I am concerned. Nevertheless, Red and Black Rind Hoop Cheese are becoming hard to find these days and while I have used regular sharp and mild cheddar cheeses, I find that they just don’t stack up to mom’s favorite and preferred cheese.