Pimento Cheese
I fell in love with this Southern staple earlier this month when my girlfriends and I spent a long weekend in Charleston, SC celebrating my bachelorette party. Pretty much all I want to eat now is chicken & biscuits and pimento cheese. I don’t know why these things haven’t traveled up North yet.
For those like me who weren’t previously acquainted with pimento cheese, it’s basically shredded sharp cheddar cheese, mayonnaise and pimentos (those red peppers that you usually see stuffed into green olives) with other ingredients mixed in according to taste. Sometimes people (like me) use cream cheese in addition to mayo, which I prefer for texture. While it may not sound complicated or exciting, it’s delicious with a kick and there are a thousand things you can do with it. It’s most often used as a spread on veggies or crackers, but you can also melt it on chicken, use it for a grilled cheese sandwich, broil it on bread, bake it up as a hot dip…the possibilities are endless! To view your WW PersonalPoints for this recipe and track it in the WW app or site, click here!
*Note: I tagged this as vegetarian because it’s easy to just omit the Worcestershire sauce, but make sure not to add it if you are serving this to vegetarians.
Pimento Cheese
Ingredients
- 8 oz 1/3 less fat cream cheese, softened
- ½ cup low fat mayonnaise, I used Hellmann’s Low Fat
- 4 oz extra sharp cheddar cheese, shredded (I used Cabot Seriously Sharp)
- 4 oz 50% reduced fat sharp cheddar cheese, shredded (I used Cabot brand)
- 4 oz jar diced pimentos, drained
- 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce *omit if making vegetarian*
- ¼ teaspoon garlic powder
- ¼ teaspoon dried chopped onions
- ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper, start here and add more to taste if you like a kick
- Salt, to taste
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix on medium speed until ingredients are well combined.
Notes
3 per (1/4 cup) serving (P+ calculated using the recipe builder on weightwatchers.com) Adapted from allrecipes