Spanish · Main
Weeknight Paella
- Intermediate
- 50 min
- roughly 4 of 4 for cost
Leads with a floral thread lifting the aroma, wood-smoke running underneath, opening aromatic and staying there.
Ingredients
- 320g bomba or calasparra rice (arborio in a pinch)
- 1L hot chicken stock + saffron
- Chicken thighs, chorizo optional (heresy but delicious), shrimp
- Sofrito: onion, garlic, grated tomato, 1 tsp pimentón
- Widest shallowest pan you own
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Paella & socarratFrying the paste until the oil splits
The words inside
Chorizo: Spanish vs. MexicanMirepoix, Trinity, Sofrito & FriendsPaprika & PimentónArborio Rice
Allergen screen
Found: shellfish
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Brown chicken; make the sofrito in the same pan until jammy.
- Add rice; toast 1 min. Add all the hot saffron stock. NOW STOP STIRRING. 1 min
- Simmer 18 min, rotating the pan; add shrimp for the last 5. 18 min
- Crank the heat 90 seconds for socarrat, the crackling bottom crust. Rest 5 min under a towel. 5 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Frying the paste until the oil splits 95 recipes
- It is being fried, not simmered: the paste is in fat over live heat and moving, holding a steady sizzle throughout rather than bubbling as a wet mass.
- The colour has deepened and darkened from raw to cooked, and the volume has visibly reduced and tightened.
- The split, the signal the whole technique is named for, is unmistakable when it comes: clear fat separates out and pools at the edges and on the surface, and the paste pulls away from the pan floor in one mass.
- The smell has turned from sharp and raw to round and fragrant, with no raw bite left from any of the aromatics that went into it.
- Nothing has caught: no black specks through the paste, no bitterness, and a pan floor that is browned but not burnt.
Where it goes wrong It was taken off as soon as it smelled good, before the fat separated; the raw edge of the aromatics is still in it, and the finished dish tastes thin and sharp no matter how long it simmers afterwards.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño
- Also Right
- Champagne
- From the Taps
- Pilsner or witbier
- Zero-Proof
- White grape & tonic
Shellfish sweetness meets acid, salinity, and bubbles, precision instruments for delicate meat.
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