Pimento

[Richard Kilgore]

Good friends gave me a jar of pimentos from their garden. And there are more where these came from. But what do with them? They guarantee that pimento cheese made from these will exceed my past experiences with the stuff, but is there something more adventurous and interesting to do with them?

[Richard Kilgore]

Come on now. There must be something i can do with these pimentos.

[Chad]

Well, they're a pepper, so you could use them however you might use a fresh pepper. Salads, salsas, whatever. Or dry them and grind them into Paprika (that's what it's made from).

Chad

[beans]

Pimentos as in jarred red bell peppers? I think I remember that as being one and the same ingredient by a different name.

If so, yikes! There are so many things that lovely pepper can grace! Salads, dips, crab cakes, sandwiches, pastas.... Yum.

[Richard Kilgore]

Hmmm. If it is a red bell pepper then, question retracted. I thought a pimento was a..., well a pimento.

[Chad]

Well, the pimento is a type of pepper, but not, as far as I know, a red bell. It's got a little more heat to it. But I don't see why your pimentos couldn't be used anyplace you'd use a good pepper. Sounds pretty yummy to me.

Chad

[Chad]

Ah, here we go:

"Dear Yahoo!:

What is a pimento and why is it in my olive?

John

Little Cressingham, England

Dear John:

Great question -- that sweet red blotch inside a tart green olive has always been a puzzler.

To answer part one of your question, we headed straight for Epicurious.com, where we found the following definition:

pimiento; pimento A large, red, heart-shaped sweet pepper that measures 3 to 4 inches long and 2 to 3 inches wide. The flesh of the pimiento (the Spanish word for "pepper") is sweet, succulent and more aromatic than that of the red bell pepper... Pimientos are the familiar red stuffing found in green olives.

Armed with a new appreciation for sweet peppers, we entered "olive + pimento" and "olive history" in the Yahoo! search box, hoping to answer the second part of your question. We couldn't find a specific reason as to where or why the practice of stuffing olives with pimentos started, but we did find some interesting facts about olives that may hint at a reason.

First, Spain leads the world in olive production, followed by Italy and Portugal. Since "pimento" is a Spanish word, we're guessing maybe they started the pimento practice. That answers the where, now for the why.

All freshly picked olives, no matter how ripe, have a vile, intensely bitter taste. In order to make them palatable, they must be pickled. Since pimentos are sweet and indigenous to the Mediterranean, it's easy to imagine an innovative farmer or chef way back when thinking they would make the perfect neutralizer to the olive's natural acidity. After all, aren't the best dishes created with ingredients most readily available?

While this is all speculation, if you visited a Spanish tapas bar and sampled a variety of olive offerings, you'd see our point. So pour yourself a martini and puzzle no more. "