Your Twice-Baked Potato Deserves This Creamy Southern Spread

Of all the ways to cook a baked potato, twice-baked recipes combine the best of creamy, fluffy textures and the hands-off techniques of relying on an oven. When you want to still keep things easy but introduce plenty of deliciousness, reach for the pimento cheese for some savory, tangy, rich flavor all in one dollop.

Pimento cheese is made of shredded cheese, tangy fat like mayonnaise or sour cream, and pickled pimento peppers, a sweet, non-spicy vegetable. Combined, it provides acid, fat, and salt, making it perfect for this recipe. Once exposed to heat, it melts into something decadently creamy, blending perfectly with the potato's flesh for something closer to a dip than a side dish. Sure, adding just cheese is already great, but the added fat from mayonnaise gives the end product a texture more similar to mashed varieties but with the perfect, roasty flavor of a baked potato.

While the ingredients in pimento cheese might be a bit delicate, most twice-baked potato recipes only call for baking them a second time for about 20 minutes at around 400 degrees Fahrenheit. When mixed with the already cooked tuber, this short bake time should have enough protection to avoid your cheese from curdling or burning in the oven. The added moisture from mayonnaise should also help prevent the end product from drying out, giving you a crisp shell with a gooey center.

Standard pimento cheese recipes call for fairly thick strands of cheddar, giving you more texture when you spread it on a cracker or bite into a sandwich. However, smaller pieces may melt more easily, especially once you've created your twice-baked potato mixture. Provided you have cheese, a type of fat, and a bit of pepper-based acid, most facets of any recipe are customizable.

If you prefer the extra tanginess of sour cream over the decadence of mayonnaise, you can make a one to one substitution for your recipe. Both have enough moisture to assist even the driest, most aged cheeses melt perfectly. This opens up new flavor options, letting you incorporate some Parmigiano Reggiano or hard, aged cheddar into the mix for sharper, more complex flavors. If you accidentally didn't store cheese in the best way, the added moisture can even compensate for unaged varieties drying out in the fridge, preventing you from having to just throw them out.

While it's in the name, the "pimento" part is perhaps the most negotiable ingredient. You need acid for tang and balance, and most people agree that a mild, peppery taste makes the condiment wonderful, but feel free to experiment. Pickled jalapenos work perfectly well if you like a little extra heat, and pickled banana peppers provide additional crunch. Sport peppers, an iconic part of any Chicago dog, straddle both sides, delivering fantastic texture with a slight boost of heat.