Frequently Asked Questions

Pimento cheese is a wonderful blend of shredded cheddar cheese, mayonnaise, pimentos and spices. Every recipe can be a little different, which is certainly a point of pride for most home cooks. We love a secret ingredient!

Our Curious Twist on Tradition® is born out of that uniqueness. Birdie is a curious cook to start with; she loves to play around in the kitchen.

Before starting Birdie’s, she was pulling the recipe apart and reconstructing it in various ways, always thinking about different “secret” ingredients. Friends would say, “I add a little cream cheese.” “Oh no, add some garlic.” “Ohh, I like to add jalapeños.” “I would never add jalapeños, I like a little onion in mine.” “I don’t use pimentos at all, only red peppers.”

Knowing it’s not wise to put every secret together, Birdie developed individual flavor profiles to showcase just how much depth can be found in pimento cheese.

Five year-round flavors, plus our seasonal ones, allow Birdie’s Pimento Cheese to explore how wonderful a pimento cheese recipe can be.

The word pimento means pepper. That can be off-putting to some, but the pimento is one of the mildest peppers on the Scoville scale, coming in between 0 and 500. Compare that to a jalapeño, which scores between 5,000 and 8,000, or a habanero at around 100,000.

Generally, basic pimento cheese is not spicy. Look for words like Jalapeño or Ghost when buying if you would like to avoid a spicy version.

When buying Birdie’s Pimento Cheese, use these descriptions to find the flavor best suited to your palate.

Classic: This is the flavor Birdie considers traditional pimento cheese. There is a bit of sweetness to this flavor. For her, it has a bit of a fruity note coming from the pimento, apple cider vinegar and white table sugar in the recipe.

Cream Cheese + Black Pepper: The tangy cream cheese and the black pepper make this the perfect pairing for a crisp white wine. It has a little more sophistication, with the black pepper bringing a bit of bite on the back of the tongue. Not spicy, but in the way that black pepper wakes up other dishes.

Garlic Parmesan: Garlic has a warmth all its own. Not spicy, but earthy. The Parmesan adds a nutty note to the warmth of the garlic, making it perfectly balanced.

Smoked Gouda + Roasted Red Pepper: Gouda is a mellow cheese to start, and using a smoked version makes it even more so. Roasting brings out the sweet vegetable flavor of the red pepper. This delightful flavor comes across as more complex, with a depth that appeals to many. There is no added sugar in this recipe; the sweet note is purely the roasted red pepper.

Jalapeño: When it comes to spicy, here we are! However, your heat tolerance will play an important role in your perception. Our Jalapeño Pimento Cheese is built to be a middle-of-the-road heat. If you like no spice, this is not the flavor for you. If you like a lot of heat, you likely won’t find this one very spicy at all.

You can certainly enjoy pimento cheese on whatever cracker tickles your fancy! A small pretzel twist will hold up best for dipping directly from the container without a utensil. But you can also use celery or carrot sticks. Top a burger with a nice dollop, add a bit to grits or noodles, or make a grilled cheese sandwich. Check out our recipe section for other inspiration.

Pimento cheese was originally developed in New York, with close ties to cream cheese, as part of the industrial revolution. Industrial food manufacturing and canned pimentos lent themselves to a mass-market product.

Later, southern farmers started growing the pimento to provide a lower-cost option than importing from Spain.

As the recipe traveled south, the cream cheese was replaced with cheddar. Hoop cheese would have been more available to the southern cook, and mayonnaise was added to make it go a little further.

The first Masters Tournament was in 1934, and it was officially named in 1939. Pimento cheese sandwiches made their debut in the late 1940s.

The Masters pimento cheese story is certainly worth a read. Quite the Southern melodrama. Check out Garden & Gun’s story from 2016 by Elizabeth Hutchison Hicklin. She really tells it best!

Why is it a Masters tradition? Birdie can only offer a personal speculation. A prominent South Hill man was in college in the late ’40s, and to make college ends meet, he made pimento cheese sandwiches in his dorm room to sell about campus. He grew up to be a pillar in our community. Guess it’s the little sandwich that makes a lot of dreams come true.

Check the date on the bottom. It’s a sell-by date, and we plan for you to get about two weeks after that in your refrigerator. Opened and left out? We find it’s gone in about two minutes. You gotta watch those guests!

We don’t recommend freezing pimento cheese. Some do and report being very happy with the thawed product, but we’re sort of picky. The mayonnaise is the ingredient that most dislikes the freezing process. Being an emulsion, freezing breaks the bond and can leave a lot of the oil hanging out on its own.

If you want to give it a try to see how you like it, we suggest starting with a small amount to test.

Birdie’s Pimento Cheese is naturally gluten free. That means we don’t have a “Certified Gluten Free” sticker, but we don’t use ingredients that have gluten and no other products are produced in our facility.

It is considered keto friendly, with just 1–2 carbs per serving and zero trans fat.

While not a vegan product, Birdie’s Pimento Cheese can fit a vegetarian diet. There is no meat in our pimento cheese, but cheese is a milk product and the mayo uses eggs.

Depending on flavor, calories range from 110 to 130 per 2 tbsp serving. Using a celery or carrot stick as the vehicle for serving certainly slots it into a healthy category.

We ship exclusively to the contiguous United States, meaning we don’t ship to Alaska or Hawai’i. Shipping cost can vary. Free shipping east of the Mississippi is unlocked at $64.

We pack our coolers to allow for two days in transit, so we can use 2nd Day Air as opposed to the more expensive Next Day Air. 2nd Day Air can run in the neighborhood of $64. We are always talking with our shipping partners to find the best and most reliable ways to get your product to you in the most cost-effective way.

We use eco-friendly shipping boxes and frozen gel packs to keep it cold. We plan for your package to be in transit no more than two days. We only ship on Mondays and Tuesdays. We find the shipping channels are not as full and more reliable earlier in the week. We don’t want your order sitting around in a warehouse getting stared at by some jealous eye wishing they had ordered Birdie’s!

Absolutely, Birdie’s is the perfect gift! It never needs dusting and can be enjoyed by all. Let us handle your gifting. You can request free gift wrap on the website.

Use our store locator to find the store nearest to you. If you don’t have a store near you, but you have a favorite small specialty store, share this page with them. It has a QR code they can use to become one of our retailers.

You can also buy directly on our website. We’d love to connect with you.