What is a pimento?!
What is a pimento?
I realize that while I'm sitting here eating a "super colossal Spanish queen olive" that I still have no clue what the pimento in the middle is. Is it some type of pepper or something?
Answers:
Pimento or piment?o are Portuguese words for "bell pepper", while pimenta refers both to chili peppers and to black pepper.
The flesh of the sweet pimento is sweet, succulent and more aromatic than that of the red bell pepper. These pimentos are the familiar red stuffing found in green olives
And in case you're wondering why they are in your olive..here's 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.