Our Classic Paella Recipe Is The Most Crowd-Pleasing Centerpiece
Paella is a guaranteed crowd-pleasing centerpiece for special occasions and parties, but honestly, this dish is enough reason to celebrate all on its own.
Transcript
00:00 What's going on gang?
00:00 It's Justin here in the Delish Test Kitchen.
00:03 I lived in Spain for like three to four months
00:05 and I honestly consider moving back just for paella.
00:08 It is a dish of national pride
00:10 and it is one of truly the greatest expressions
00:12 of the multi-dimensional abilities of rice.
00:15 On one hand, it's gonna be like moist and packed
00:18 with saffron tinge flavor,
00:19 but then on the bottom,
00:20 it gets nice and crispy and cracker-like.
00:23 It's so delicious.
00:24 It is daunting, I'm daunted,
00:26 but there are some tips and tricks that we can get into
00:29 for making it at home in a simple way.
00:31 Let's get started.
00:31 If you ask anybody from Spain, what makes paella paella,
00:34 they'll have a lot of answers
00:35 and probably one of the first things
00:37 is gonna be talking about the pan itself.
00:39 This is a paella, as they'd say it in Spain.
00:41 It's literally like named for the dish
00:43 or the dish is named for this, regardless.
00:46 It's a very shallow pan.
00:47 As you can see, it's heavy bottom.
00:49 This one's cast iron,
00:50 so it's gonna conduct heat really well.
00:52 We don't want any hot spots and we love that shallowness
00:55 because that's gonna cook the rice perfectly.
00:57 In Spain, you're gonna see paella
00:59 filled with a lot of different stuff.
01:00 I will say they typically stick to like seafood paella
01:03 and like meat paella.
01:04 It's kind of like gumbo in that way,
01:06 where they kind of delineate it
01:07 based off what protein or lack thereof that's in it.
01:10 For this, we're making a paella mixta,
01:11 which is gonna have all different stuff in it.
01:13 It's gonna have this shrimp,
01:14 some chicken thighs that I wet and cut up.
01:16 It's about an inch pieces.
01:18 This is a very rustic dish.
01:19 You can be rustic here.
01:20 And then this is controversial.
01:22 In Spain, they would never really add this,
01:24 but I love it and I want it in this paella.
01:27 This is Spanish chorizo,
01:28 not to be confused with the raw Mexican chorizo,
01:31 also delicious, just not what we're using here.
01:33 This is a cured sausage that made with a lot of paprika.
01:36 It's very smoky.
01:37 I'm gonna slice this up into like half inch, inch cubes,
01:40 just like nice little thick coin babies.
01:42 We're gonna go into our pan with our olive oil,
01:45 get that up over like medium high heat.
01:48 Then we're gonna add our chorizo.
01:49 We're gonna brown that up.
01:50 It should take like one to two minutes,
01:52 get some of that crispiness on there.
01:54 We took the chorizo out.
01:55 It is so intensely well seasoned
01:57 that the entire kitchen already smells incredible.
02:00 I would truly just eat this,
02:01 but I'm gonna have to hold back
02:03 because we have a lot of other things to do,
02:04 but we're gonna place this to the side
02:06 and go in with our chicken.
02:07 I'm gonna season this simply with a little bit of salt.
02:09 We're gonna get it into our pan
02:11 and we're gonna get it seared well on all sides,
02:13 making sure it's golden brown,
02:14 but it doesn't need to be cooked through.
02:16 While this continues to brown,
02:18 we're gonna get a little bit more prep done.
02:21 I love a method that I see throughout Spanish cooking,
02:24 which is grating tomatoes.
02:25 It kind of makes like an impromptu tomato puree
02:29 and you don't need to have like a fancy machine or anything.
02:31 They use this for pan con tomate.
02:32 It's super delicious.
02:33 All you gotta do is lob off the top of the tomatoes,
02:36 grate it into a bowl.
02:37 Just use your standard like box grater.
02:39 Then you can go ahead and grate or mince or crush
02:42 three cloves of garlic into that mixture.
02:44 Much like Italian cooking,
02:46 I think a lot of Spanish cooking
02:47 likes to let the ingredients speak for themselves
02:49 so they don't go wild with a ton of different seasonings.
02:52 There isn't like the Spanish spice mix.
02:54 But if you were to create one,
02:55 it would probably include these two ingredients.
02:57 The first of which being paprika.
02:59 This is a smoked paprika.
03:01 As I said before, that's what's used in that chorizo sausage.
03:05 Then there is saffron.
03:06 This is what many people called red gold
03:09 because it is so expensive.
03:10 This can be 10 to $20 a gram.
03:13 It's these little red threads
03:15 and you can kind of see with how they look like.
03:17 They're like the little like threads
03:19 that come out of the middle of a flower.
03:20 So you're only getting like four or five per flower.
03:23 That's why it's so expensive.
03:24 It's earthy, it's sweet.
03:26 One of the best things that it's known for
03:28 is adding a deep red color to dishes that it's used in.
03:30 It's used in a lot of Middle Eastern cooking
03:32 and it's definitely super well known
03:34 to adding that orangey reddish color to paella.
03:37 Now that this chicken is nice and beautifully browned,
03:40 it has that like orange stain from the chorizo juices.
03:43 I'm gonna move all of it to one side
03:46 and then I'm gonna go in with my tomatoes and garlic.
03:49 I'm gonna let that cook for about five minutes
03:51 until the tomato is caramelized and slightly thickened
03:54 and that garlic should smell really good.
03:56 So we're gonna add that paprika
03:57 and that red gold saffron into that tomato mixture.
04:01 Give it a mix, let it meld for about a minute.
04:03 Then we're gonna add our chorizo back to the pan
04:06 and a bunch of chicken broth.
04:08 We're gonna let that stock come up to a boil
04:12 but while it does, let's talk rice.
04:14 This is the only thing
04:15 that I don't think you can really change.
04:17 The rice is very important in paella.
04:18 It is a rice dish and what you use is super important.
04:21 You're gonna be looking for bomba rice,
04:23 which is sometimes labeled as paella rice,
04:25 as it is in this case.
04:26 It'll usually come in some fancy packaging,
04:28 although this was on sale and was like six or seven bucks.
04:31 It's not that expensive.
04:32 But what's really important is it is a short grain rice
04:35 and it is super absorbent.
04:38 We are looking for a texture at the end of the day
04:40 that is not risotto.
04:41 We don't want something creamy.
04:42 We want something where each of the individual rice granules
04:45 are like detectable
04:46 and they all have absorbed as much flavor as possible.
04:49 And that's really important to be using this rice
04:51 to do that.
04:52 Another thing to know about bomba rice or paella rice
04:55 is that it takes a ton of liquid
04:57 to make sure that it's cooked correctly.
05:00 It's gonna take about like three times by volume.
05:02 So if we're using two cups of rice,
05:04 we're gonna need six cups of stock.
05:05 We're gonna add our rice, give it a nice toss
05:08 so we have an even layer
05:09 and so that all of the rice is covered in liquid.
05:12 And once that's done, don't touch it.
05:13 We like truly do not wanna touch this rice.
05:15 This is not, again, like risotto
05:17 where we're gonna be constantly mixing it.
05:18 We truly want this to stay.
05:20 We want the liquid to get absorbed into this rice.
05:23 So just resist every urge to touch this.
05:26 We're gonna cook this over high heat
05:28 for the first five minutes.
05:29 You can see we've got a nice hard boil going here
05:31 just to jumpstart that cooking.
05:33 And we're gonna reduce the heat down to a medium
05:35 and let it simmer away.
05:36 It's about finding that texture
05:38 because what we're looking for
05:39 is not only for that rice to be totally well-cooked,
05:41 we're also looking for browning on the bottom.
05:44 So it's this very even game of controlling your heat
05:46 so you're not burning the bottom
05:48 but you're still cooking the rice inside.
05:49 Once you hear mostly just the rice toasting
05:52 and popping on the bottom and no liquid bubbling,
05:55 that's how you know you're done.
05:56 Simmer, simmers away and I resist the urge
05:59 to wanna scoop around and touch it.
06:01 I'm instead gonna come over and use that shrimp
06:03 that I bet you thought I forgot about.
06:05 I didn't.
06:05 And I'm gonna season this, again, just simply with salt.
06:08 And we're gonna get this.
06:09 Once their rice starts appearing at the top of the pan,
06:13 like rising to the top, getting a little bit more swollen,
06:15 you can start like polka dotting the top of the paella
06:18 with shrimp and that's gonna just cook from the steam
06:22 that's generated from the shrimp.
06:24 It'll cook gently, really nicely for like eight to nine
06:26 minutes until it's nice, pink, plump, delicious.
06:28 It should coincide, if you time it correctly,
06:30 with your rice being perfectly cooked.
06:32 The most iconic part about paella is the socorrot
06:35 or the socorrat.
06:36 It's the bottom of the pan
06:38 where that rice gets nice and crispy.
06:40 You'll see it all throughout different cuisines
06:41 in the world in like Chinese clay pot rice,
06:44 in Iranian tadik.
06:45 It is that elusive, illustrious, delicious thing
06:48 where the oil seeps down from the rest of the dish
06:51 and crisps up almost like a cracker.
06:53 It is so delicious.
06:54 It is so incredible.
06:56 And it's a little hard to get,
06:57 but once you figure out how to control your heat
06:58 in the right way, you have a perfect,
07:00 beautiful socorrat every time.
07:02 This looks out of this world.
07:07 I'm gonna take this off the heat
07:08 and it's gonna sit for like five minutes
07:10 and then you can dig into it.
07:12 The olive oil, the chorizo,
07:14 the tomato bringing that sweetness and umami.
07:16 And the rice is cooked perfectly.
07:18 I have the crunch in my mouth that's just subtle enough.
07:21 I am excited to eat all the proteins in this,
07:22 but it's all about the rice here.
07:24 It has absorbed all those incredible flavors.
07:26 When you serve this, you can just serve it straight up.
07:28 I wouldn't even garnish it with herb.
07:29 Truly the most I do is just a little bit of lemon.
07:31 It actually does take it a long way
07:33 because we don't have too, too much acid in this.
07:36 So a little bit of fresh lemon at the end
07:37 makes a huge difference and it's delicious.
07:39 All right, I have to now convince myself
07:40 to not eat this entire pan myself,
07:42 but if you want more international staple recipes,
07:45 stick around here on delish.com.
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