Hey, and welcome to the short stuff, I'm Josh. There's Chuck and Jerry's here sitting in on behalf of producer Dave, who actually produces these. So I guess she's maybe encroaching on Dave's territory. I don't know. I don't want to put my foot in that hornet's nest. But anyway, short stuff like I was saying. About pimiento cheese. Yeah, yeah, I know I said that with Italian because it's Spanish. That was close. It's nearby.

But the the fact is, Chuck, you've just hit upon an artifact of culinary history that there used to be an extra eye in Pimento and everyone said, I don't like this here.

I don't like the way it looks. I don't like how it sounds. I'm getting rid of it. And by God, we did.

And I don't like you. What am I going to do with it? Right. I'm just a poor pimento farmer. I've just been saying pimiento. That's what I don't like. Yeah.

So this is about pimento cheese. The the delicious. One of my favorite things that you can eat here in the South that many people, most people I think associate with the South. Yeah, for sure. But it's not actually from the South is it. No, it started in New York, they think. As a matter of fact. Yes. What indeed, Chuck around World War One and even more what than that pimento cheese bore almost no resemblance whatsoever to what we think of as pimento cheese today.

It had the pimentos, those pimento peppers from Spain that are much milder than your average hot chili pepper. But they also have a little bit a little bit kick to them and they're worth putting in mixed together with. Cream cheese, mustard and some chives. That was the original pimento cheese, and it does not sounds delicious. I don't think it sounds very good, but apparently America around World War One was just absolutely nuts for not just World War One.

Apparently from about the 1920s up to the 1940s, that form of pimento cheese was all the rage. Yeah, it was easily turned, it was easily shipped.

Yeah, I think soldiers it was a big part of their rations in the war, so it was a little slice of home. OK, I could see it like that. And a little green can. Yeah. And I think, you know, depending on what kind of mustard if it was, I'm not not the biggest mustard guy, but there are some kinds of Colman's, some kinds of brown mustard I would eat in other things, but not just on its own.

Have you had Colman's yellow fancy yellow mustard. Yeah, I'm not in the yellow mustard at all. OK, this is more brown. I know what you're saying.

I totally get it. Give Colman's a chance. And what I doesn't matter, it's just, you know, how Dukes is just somehow different and all the best ways as far as mayonaise goes, Colman's is just that way with yellow mustard. It's not like it's like, oh, this is what yellow mustard is supposed to taste like, you know what I mean?

I'll have to see. I mean, I historically have not had a yellow mustard I've ever liked at all. And I generally don't like mustard at all, but I occasionally will like it in a dish.

OK. You're telling me to try something? I really kind of hate you. I'm telling you thinking that I would like it because you like it.

You know, I'm just trying to turn you into so that I think is going to change your life. That's all I'm saying. Just try it.

I just don't like mustard. I'll try Colman's and maybe it's it maybe it doesn't taste like mustard.

Just get yourself a little taste, a little bowl, not a big bowl. And then, you know, put a bunch of Colman's mustard in it. Get yourself a spoon. OK, God, give it a half an hour.

That makes me want to wrap it and then seriously think so.

Cream cheese as pimento cheese. Those sweet little red pimiento peppers in the hundreds late eighteen hundreds. They started coming to America from Spain. Yeah. And you know, people liked them. They were colorful, they were mild, they weren't very spicy at all. And Americans of that era thought it was very, very palatable thing to them. Yeah.

And cream cheese was pretty new around the same time too. So people said, let's see what happens when we put these together. And they said, oh, this is really good. And so that version of pimento cheese sandwiches started popping up and like Good Housekeeping cookbooks and things like that. And so food companies started mass producing. They mass produced versions like the soldiers got in World War One. That stuff was flying off the shelves. And so if you were having, you know, friends over for, you know, finger food or something like that, you would probably serve pimento cheese sandwiches, but it would be a pimentos spread that you would buy at the store and spread on the bread.

And then there you go. And that is nothing like what pimento cheeses, as we think of today. And the whole reason that it made this transition was because the South is wacky. And I think, Chuck, we should take a message break and then come back and talk about how the wacky South took pimento cheese and made it a million times better.

That's right. I'm going to go have a spoonful of mustard and vomit and be right back.

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Great podcast Dotcom to vote for your favorite to help us find the next great podcast. All right, so pimento cheese is all the rage all of a sudden they've dropped that eye in the recipes in America, so people finally understood it here in the U.S. They started mass producing it and it was in grocery stores. And then the south steps up and says it's even here in Georgia, as a matter of fact, and said, you know what, I think we can grow these little peppers right here.

Can we have some seeds? Spain? Yeah.

In fact, Griffin, Georgia became the pimento capital of the United States. That's right.

They got the seeds from the Spanish consulate in the early 1980s. And by the time 1960 rolls around, they they're harvesting the stuff.

They're making it rain with pimentos and people are going crazy. So. So, Griffin, Georgia was the pimental capital during that first cream cheese pimento cheese boom between the 1920s of the 1940s. But the thing is, in the South, either there wasn't easy access to cream cheese or people were just like, I don't like this Yankee cream cheese stuff. Let's try it was that I'm going to. Yeah.

So they they took what was a mass produced cheese spread and decided to deconstruct it into their own thing. The South did. And they they kind of took the idea of pimento cheese and turned it into something totally different. They got rid of the cheese, the cream cheese they did away with the mustard. They didn't have anything to do with chives. And instead they said, let's keep the pimentos so we can still call it pimento cheese. Well, let's change absolutely everything else.

And it's kind of akin to saying like this, this deviled chicken spread that's mass produced that you you make a sandwich out of. Let's figure out a way to alter that and call it chicken spread still. But then that will become the new chicken spread and the other chickens will be lost to history, basically.

What's the the chicken spread? You never had chicken spread. It is a salty delight, Chuck.

Is it like tuna fish salad or something? Or chicken salad?

Yes. No, it's actually basically whipped chicken with mild chunks in it.

So it just is salty as the day is long and you just put it on some bread and you got a little sandwich there, don't add anything else to it. You just chicken spread bread or toast, plain bread or toast and eat and like your prune up from from all of the salt that suddenly invades your body. But it's really tasty, if not really, really bad for you.

I think I know what you're talking about because when I worked at Golden Pantry in Athens in college, there would be like road workers would come in during the middle of the day and get like potted chicken, tinned chicken and saltines for their lunch. Yeah. Is that what it was?

Yeah. Or Vienna Sausage would be on the same aisle with it. Well, I've had those. Okay, yeah. If you just look slightly to the left of the Vienna sausage you're going to find the devil chicken spread, blow the dust off of it. It's so good though. I mean, it's tasty. It's not good goods. The right. It's just a tasty, terrible snack.

All right. So here in the south, like you said, they said, let's change it up all together. They said we don't like that cream cheese.

We don't eat bagels down here in the south. Let's find something else that's white and delicious and abundant. And that thing is mayonnaise.

They replace the cream cheese with mayonnaise. That was that point, added other cheese like cheese, sure. I think just because, you know, they felt guilty about not eating cheese, just having mayonnaise and pimentos, that wouldn't be a dish.

But they added shredded cheese, usually cheddar. And apparently it's your preference up to your preference whether you use Scharper mild cheddar. But that's the other big ingredient. So you've got pimentos, mayonnaise, shredded cheese. You basically have pimento cheese with just those three ingredients. Yeah.

And, you know, pimento cheese has become one of those things where every family has their own recipe. If you're into pimento cheese and like you said, there are some small variations, you can add some little spices here and there. You can add some nonreaders, you can add a few different kinds of cheese if you want. Proportions may change a little bit. It's basically the same thing I've seen people add bacon and how it goes. And, you know, my favorite is the Palmetto Cheese, but I started to.

Have you ever had the Palmetto Cheese?

Oh, yeah, I did. I did some research, though, and I. I kind of fell off them.

Well, I did that same research and I kind of stopped halfway through because I was like, I don't really know if I want to know anymore. Sure.

Have you and I think I mentioned this last time we talked about Palmero, which is when I started to do research. But Queen Charlotte from Charlotte, North Carolina. And there is stuff you should know. Listener They sent us some, if you'll remember. And it is just absolutely amazing stuff. It's really, really cheese. If you can get your hands on Queen Charlotte Pimento Cheese, you got pretty much the best you can get.

But the the cheese, huh? They send us cheese. You're hurting the cheese. This was years ago, and I offered it to you and I think you turned it down. I would never just something that somebody sent to us. You crazy.

I don't remember. Like now here have some of this mustard, right.

They said it's mustard and then some other stuff you don't care about.

I'll have to try that. Queen Charlotte. You should.

Yeah, of course I. I would have I would not have just hoarded something somebody sent to us. Come on. All right. So the great thing about pimento cheese, too, is you can just make it yourself at home.

Sure, with those three things, yeah, so that's what I would I would suggest trying you could also go to the Masters, which are very well known for pimento cheese, right?

Yeah, they just had the Noufal classic.

So if you go to the Masters, even if you've never been to the Masters like me, you know that they have a pimento cheese sandwich there that's like as important as the golf that's being played and they sell them for a dollar fifty. But apparently there is a bit of a scandal because they used a guy named Nick Rengo who made their pimento cheese from the mid 1950s all the way until 1998. And the Augusta National people said, you know what, we're going to switch over to somebody else.

Why would they do that? I don't know. They're all about tradition.

But get this, the caterer they switched to is named as the company's called wife saver. Which if I have ever encountered a company that's owned by a man who's not married, it's whoever named a wife saver caterers, but he he couldn't get the recipe from Nick Brangus, Nick Rango said, you know what, you're going to drop me. This secret recipe is going to stay secret. And in fact, he carried the secret recipe to his grave, but life saver figured out how to make it and figured out that there is indeed a secret secret ingredient to that recipe.

And they're keeping that recipe secret, too. So no one knows how to make the pimento cheese at Augusta National except for John wife Sabr.

And also, you know, if you've if you're from a different part of the country, you've never had it. It's generally eaten cold, like you spread on a cracker. You can you can eat just a pimento cheese sandwich between two pieces of bread, or you can use it as your cheese if you have like a a turkey sandwich or something and you want to use prominences instead of cheese. That's delicious.

It's also good with cheeseburgers. Is the cheese on a cheeseburger?

Yeah. Like you can eat it hot or warm. It's generally served cold, but it is pretty good on a cheeseburger. It is good, it tastes totally different.

Hot than it does cold. I mean not not like oh this is the hot version of pimento cheese. It tastes like a different thing almost. Oh you think. I think so. It really brings out the like heat in the pimento to me. I don't find pimentos to have any heat, I need to need to branch out, I need to grow some pimentos. I'm curious to do that. Go down to Griffin and be like, hey, give me some pimentos.

Yeah. Anything else? I got nothing else. Well, that's it for sure. Stuff. Everybody pimiento cheese away.

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