As a lifelong southerner, it's a bit embarrassing to admit that I had never made homemade pimento cheese before the summer of 2022. I've ordered it in restaurants and purchased it in the grocery store a lot, but until what I'm calling the great pepper harvest of 2022, I never made it myself.
Confession: I still haven't actually made pimento cheese. I have three pimento peppers on a plant that just don't seem to want to go from green to red. I do, however, have an abundance of ripe sriracha (red jalapeno) peppers. That is where the story of this recipe begins.
After making a ton of homemade sriracha sauce (thanks for posting an awesome sriracha recipe ScratchPantry.com) and canning pickled and plain slices, I started wondering how those peppers would work in a pimento cheese recipe. Being me, I decided to try it and find out. All I can say is wow. Sriracha peppers are awesome prepared in the style of pimento cheese.
Sriracha Cheese Recipe Ingredients
To make this recipe, you'll need:
1/2 pound of sriracha peppers (fully mature jalapenos that have turned red)
8-ounce package of cream cheese, softened
8 ounces of plain Greek yogurt (you could also use mayo, but this cuts the calories)
1- 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese (more or less depending on your preference)
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
1 teaspoon of paprika
Salt to taste
Sriracha Cheese Recipe Ingredients
This is a completely no-cook recipe, so it's very easy to make.
Put on gloves.
Remove the stem and seeds from the sriracha peppers
Run them through your food processor's shredding blade (this is better than hand chopping because you'll end up with a bit of pepper juice in addition to the chopped peppers; I use a Ninja Professional XL food processor)
Remove gloves and wash hands. (I always wash my hands with the gloves on, then remove the gloves and wash again.)
Put the cream cheese, Greek yogurt (or mayo), garlic powder, and paprika in a bowl and stir to combine.
Pour the peppers directly from the food processor bowl into the cheese, yogurt and spice mixture.
Stir until well combined.
Pour in the cheddar cheese and mix well. I suggest starting with around a cup of cheese, adding more if you feel it needs it. (I max out the cheese).
Taste and add salt as needed per your preference
You can eat it right away - it'll taste great as soon as you make it. However, it'll taste even better after it sits in the refrigerator overnight.
Serving Suggestion
This dip tastes great on saltine crackers. It tastes beyond awesome on Frito's Scoops. It's also a great topping for hamburgers. I'm sure there are a lot of other ways to enjoy it as well. If you make it and come up with some tasty serving suggestions, please leave a comment!
Try it, You're Sure to Love It
Try this sriracha cheese recipe; you're sure to love it! Seriously, this recipe is awesome. Even if you're not a fan of spicy food, I'd still encourage you to try this recipe - surprisingly, it's really not all that spicy. To me, it seems to have about the same spiciness of ordinary pimento cheese. This is probably because pimento cheese usually includes ground cayenne in addition to pimento peppers. My sriracha recipe doesn't have any cayenne in it, so you're only getting heat from the peppers themselves. Enjoy!!!!
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