Our Classic Paella Recipe Is The Most Crowd-Pleasing Centerpiece

Delish

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.

07:47 (upbeat music)

07:49 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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