Paella Recipe and Cooking Tips

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Looking to feed a gathering with little effort and a big flavor payoff?

You can easily fan the flames of community with this simple, easy, and delicious paella recipe.

You may think paella is unapproachable in the home kitchen and left best as a dish to be ordered out.

No so.

Let’s peel away this shroud of mystique around paella.

 

Where Paella Came From

With its roots in Valencia, Spain, farmers and field workers gave birth to this dish as they gathered and communally cooked their mid-day meal.

As fast food was still a century or two away, everyone contributed something to the dish, rice, chicken, rabbit, spices, green beans, etc. It was the original potluck lunch. 

This communal meal was traditionally cooked over an open fire which imparted a delightfully smoky flavor. The cookware used was a shallow, large diameter, flat-bottomed round pan with two handles.

Eventually the dish itself came to be known by the name of the pan – paella.

Today, there are multiple versions of paella that includes all types of proteins, pork, chorizo, squid, and others. Our paella recipe features shrimp and mussels.

 

Which Rice to Use For Paella

Traditional paella rice is called bomba. It’s a short-grain rice that has an amazing ability to absorb water and swell two to three times its original size. The beauty of bomba in paella is that even after swelling the rice grain maintains its structure without becoming overly sticky or mushy.

But there are two challenges with using bomba rice in paella. It’s expensive and it’s hard to find. More than likely you will not find it in your local supermarket.

Our paella recipe substitutes arborio rice for bomba. It’s easily sourced, more reasonably priced than bomba, and it will hold its structure when cooked properly as in our paella recipe below.

 

Cooking Tips

1. Properly Size Your Pan

A paella pan is preferred. What is a paella pan? It’s a wide, shallow pan that provides the maximum area on the bottom of the pan for the rice to crisp as it cooks (more on this in tip #2). If you don’t have a paella pan, all is not lost. Use a large skillet to provide that extra space for the rice to lay in a shallow layer in the pan. See the notes in the recipe below for sizing.

 

2. Don’t Stir Your Rice – Embrace the Soccarat

The most coveted part of a perfectly cooked paella is the bottom layer of rice. Perfection is achieved when that bottom layer is crusty and crunchy with a deep brown color without being burned. This is called soccarat.

Resist the urge to stir your rice. It seems to go against the instinct of a cook to do so. Once you’ve distributed the rice into your skillet, let it be. As the cooking time progresses, the liquid in the pan will be absorbed by the rice or evaporated. As this happens the rice in contact with the bottom of the skillet will brown and crisp. Be sure to listen for the telltale crackling sound from the bottom of your skillet that means this process is in play. But stay close. That bottom layer of rice can go from perfectly browned to burnt in an instant.

 

3. Rest

Cover and rest your paella once it has finished cooking. This will ensure that the rice has absorbed all traces of moisture left in the pan. No one likes a liquidy paella. Newspapers are the traditional covering in Spain. You can simply cover your pan with whatever lid you have available. 

 

Now You Know! Go Cook Paella

Paella is a simple dish and easy enough on a weeknight.

Gather your community around the table today and give this recipe a try.

Want to book a Live, Virtual Paella Cooking Class for your group? Click here for more details on the class.

Buy Chef Sandra’s Paella seasoning here.

 

   

 

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