There are 460,000 results when you Google “pimento cheese recipe” so I’m revisiting my Bacon Pimento Cheese recipe. This time, I was making this tasty spread for a wedding and a going away party for a vegetarian so the bacon was out. I also wanted to make the spice in this batch a little more subtle, so I swapped the cayenne for some pepper jack cheese, adjusted the ratios and came up with this super tasty version.
Pimento cheese is great on crackers, on little sandwiches and as a vegetable dip. It’s a quick and easy app that you can mix up days before your party so I highly recommend putting it in your party prep rotation. This would be a great appetizer to put out for the big sports game on Thanksgiving day!
I came up with this idea because I liked the name Bacon Pimento Cheese Puffs. The fact that these bite size apps are delicious is just a happy coincidence. These puffs are basic choux pastry puffs that are filled with my tasty baconey pimento cheese. They are the perfect appetizer for a classy party and are a twist on the traditional Pimento Cheese Sandwiches that are served at teas, brunches, and showers all over the south.
Choux pastry can be intimidating because it’s unlike any other pastry dough you’ve ever made. My motto is “if other people can do it, so can I,” so I encourage you to give it a shot. They’re sure to impress everyone at your next gathering.
Preheat the oven to 425° and line 2 baking pans with parchment paper.
In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring the water, butter and salt to a boil.
Dump in all of the flour at once and stir the mixture with a wooden spoon until it forms a smooth dough ball.
Remove from heat and transfer the dough to the work bowl of a stand mixer and let it cool for 5 – 10 minutes.
Once the dough has cooled a bit, turn the mixer on low and add the eggs one at a time, waiting into the egg is fully mixed in before adding another one. It’ll look weird for a bit and then turn into a smooth batter/dough mixture by the time you’re done.
Transfer the batter/dough to one of the bottom corners of large zip-top bag and press it all into one corner to make a piping bag.
Snip the tip of your make-shift piping bag about ¼ of the way up and pipe the dough into 1” blobs onto the prepared baking pans.
Bake for 10 minutes at 425°, reduce the heat to 350°, and cook for another 10 minutes or until they are golden brown and delicious.
Cool completely on a rack.
Make the Cheese
Mix cream cheese, mayonnaise, and cayenne pepper until thoroughly combined.
Fold in the remaining ingredients and mix until everything is evenly distributed.
Fill the Puffs
Open the puffs by splitting the tops off like a biscuit.
Fill the puffs with 1 – 2 teaspoons of the Bacon Pimento Cheese.
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Tips and Tricks
You can make the puffs the day before and store them, loosely covered, at room temperature. When you’re ready to assemble the puffs, pop them in a 375° oven for about 5 minutes to refresh them. Just make sure you assemble them immediately before service.
Feed the Freezer Make Ahead
You can make the components for these treats a day before your event. Store the cheese and the puffs separately and put them together right before service (see tips and tricks).
Fun Facts
The pâte à choux pastry in this recipe is the same pastry that is used for éclairs and beignets. It’s actually the starting point for many of the world’s finest desserts!
Every good southern cook should have a breakfast casserole up their sleeve. There are hundreds of different recipes and they’re all variations on “pour scrambled eggs over tasty breakfast foods and cook” so you should be able to find one that suits you. This recipe is the first breakfast casserole that I ever had so I thought I’d share it with you first.
All of the prep-work for this sausagey, eggy, cheesy breakfast casserole is done the night before, so this the perfect breakfast for a large crowd. Once you learn the basics of this casserole, you can substitute your favorite things in until you create your very own perfect breakfast casserole.
Crumble and cook the sausage in a large skillet over medium heat until it’s browned.
Using a slotted spoon, remove the cooked to a paper-towel lined plate and pour off all but about 1 Tbs of the fat left in the pan.
Add the peppers and onions to the pan, season with salt and pepper, and cook until they are soft and translucent - about 5 minutes.
While the peppers and onions are cooking, beat the eggs, sour cream and milk together in a large bowl.
Spray a 9 x 13 casserole dish with non-stick cooking spray.
Split the English muffins and line the bottom of the dish with them. Pour the butter over the English muffins and then layer on the cooked sausage, peppers and onions, and cheese. Pour the egg mixture over the top, cover and refrigerate overnight.
Cook the Casserole
Wake up and stumble through putting the coffee on
Preheat the oven to 375°
Cook the casserole for 35 – 40 minutes until the eggs are set in the middle.
Let the casserole rest for 10 – 15 minutes and serve.
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Tips and Tricks
Leave the sausage out for a tasty vegetarian (or at least ovo-lacto vegetarian) breakfast casserole!
Feed the Freezer
This casserole, like many other casseroles will freeze beautifully! Instead of refrigerating overnight before cooking, freeze before cooking. Move it to the refrigerator before you go to bed and cook as normal.
Fun Facts
Breakfast casserole also goes by the names egg strada and crustless quiche.
I like to take frozen food to new parents because after about 2 weeks, the grandparents leave and people stop bringing over fresh food. The babies are still newborns and the parents are still exhausted so I try to make stuff to get them through a few more days. The first time I did that was for my sister’s first child and I made her this lasagna.
This awesome lasagna recipe is the second recipe I ever wrote (at the behest of my sister) and one of the dishes I make for a crowd. The sauce is chock full of vegetables and hot Italian sausage and the lasagna is loaded with cheese. Another great thing about this recipe is that it makes 2 full-size lasagnas or 6 loafsagnas, making it ideal for feeding your freezer.
8 Ounces Cremini Mushrooms, Sliced (sometimes called “Baby Portobello”)
Salt and Pepper
2 - 28 oz cans of diced tomatoes
1 Cup Cabernet Sauvignon
1lb Hot Italian Sausage, casings removed
Big Handful of Parsley, finely chopped (about ½ cup)
Lots of Basil, finely chopped (about ½ cup)
4 oz Ricotta Cheese
For the Lasagna
24 Lasagna Noodles
32 oz Mozzarella Cheese, Shredded
3 oz Parmesan Cheese, Shredded
Instructions
Make the Sauce
Sautee the onions and garlic in the olive oil, 2 pinches of salt, and 5 grinds of pepper, in a big pot over medium heat until they start to soften (about 5 minutes).
Add the other copped vegetables and mix to combine all the ingredients. Add in the tomatoes and wine and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, stir occasionally, clean the kitchen, read a book.
Once all of our vegetable friends are soft (about an hour to an hour and a half), puree the mixture with an emersion blender (stick blender). If you don’t have an emersion blender, write a note to get one and use a food processor or a regular blender. The sauce should be pretty smooth and there shouldn’t be any chunks of veggies left (you’re welcome moms and picky eaters).
Remove the casings from the sausage and cook it up in a cast iron skillet like you’d cook ground beef. Drain it on a paper towel and then add to the sauce. Throw in the parsley and basil, and adjust the seasoning to taste. If it’s too acidic, add a bit more wine or some sugar. If it’s not salty enough add a little but remember that all of the cheese you’re going to add is salty so don’t go crazy.
Stir in the ricotta until it’s melted and take the sauce off the heat.
Cook the Pasta
Fill a large pot ⅔ full of water and bring to a boil over high heat. Once the water boils, add the salt.
Cook half of the pasta in the boiling water for 6 minutes, remove from the water (don’t discard the water), and lay flat on parchment paper. Do not use no-cook lasagna noodles. They’re gross.
Build the Lasagnas
Note: For this recipe, we’re going to use 2 foil lasagna pans. You can also use 1 lasagna pan and 3 loaf pans (pictured below).
Layer as follows:
Sauce
noodles (3 vertical and 1 across the bottom)
Sauce
Mozzarella and a bit of Parmesan
noodles (1 across the top and 3 vertical)
Sauce
Mozzarella and a bit of Parmesan
noodles (3 vertical and 1 across the bottom)
Sauce
Offensive amount of mozzarella and some Parmesan
Cook the Lasagnas!
Preheat the oven to 375°
Cook the lasagnas for 45 minutes or until the top is bubbly and it’s heated through (160° on an instant-read thermometer).
Let the lasagnas sit for 10 – 15 minutes before cutting so they can firm up a bit.
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Gather the ingredients first.
Don’t go crazy with the sauce.
Feed the Freezer with Loaf Pans!
Tips and Tricks
If you don’t like pockets of ricotta in your lasagna, do what I do and melt it in the sauce!
When building the lasagnas, it’s best to layer both at the same time so you can make sure you don’t run out of anything and end up with a sad lasagna.
If you’d like to break up the cooking process, you can stop this recipe after making the sauce and before assembling the lasagna. You can hold assembled lasagnas in the refrigerator for 48 hours without any reduction in quality. Just bring it to room temperature before you cook it and your cooking time should be the same.
Feed the Freezer
This dish is perfect freezer food so make a lot at once and hang on to the rest. When I make this at home, we make one large pan for when we have company and 3 small loaf pans for when it’s just the two of us and we don’t want leftovers. Simply trim the noodles to fit the length of your loaf pans and use one per layer. You now have loafsagna!
Reheat from frozen at 375° for 1 hour and 30 minutes – one hour and 45 minutes for the full lasagna (1 hour for the loafsagna). Cover them with aluminum for all but the last 20 minutes to make sure you don’t burn the cheese. Heat until a probe thermometer inserted in the center of the lasagna reaches 160°.
Fun Facts
July is Lasagna Awareness Month so we got this one in right under the wire!
Growing up in the south, pimento cheese was always around but I never tried it because I thought it was like pimento loaf which is gross looking. Needless to say, I was super upset that I’d eschewed this tasty treat when I finally tried it a couple of years ago at Empire State South.
This creamy, cheesy, bacony spread is as good on crackers as it is on a sandwich. If you’ve never tried pimento cheese, I highly recommend you take a few minutes to mix up a batch. Your taste buds will thank you regardless of what your belt may say.
Mix cream cheese, mayonnaise, and cayenne pepper until thoroughly combined.
Fold in the remaining ingredients and mix until everything is evenly distributed.
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Tips and Tricks
Shred your own cheese! It’s quick and easy and you need the oil from freshly shredded cheese to help bind this together. The pre-shredded stuff is engineered to not bind together. Mmmmmm…engineered cheese.
Feed the Freezer
The longer this spread hangs out in the refrigerator, the more time the flavors get to mingle. Don’t go crazy (and if you see mold toss it out) but this spread will last for a while in cold storage.
Fun Facts
Pimento cheese sandwiches were a very popular lunch staple for working-class southerners because it was easy to make and the ingredients were inexpensive and readily available.
Background
Recipe
Tips and Tricks
Feed the Freezer
Fun Facts
10 mins and 10 mins
