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So what I'm trying to do here is get as close as possible to a traditional Valencian paella — while
at the same time, I'm keeping everything super fast and quick and small. It's a weeknight paella,
with a manageable ingredient list for a typically small contemporary household.
Spain's national dish here was originally invented to feed massive teams of farmhands,
which is why paella is traditionally cooked in these giant specialized paella pans,
which is technically redundant because paella means pan in Valencian. But anyway,
I'm just using a 10-inch, or 25-cm sauté pan. That'll feed mom & dad and two little kids,
but if you need more food you could double my quantities and use a 12-inch pan.
The defining spice and coloring, of course, is saffron — the painstakingly harvested stigma
and styles of certain crocus flowers. Quite expensive, but you only need a pinch — that
sachet was an eighth of a gram, and honestly I could have used half of it for this much food.
Lots of the recipes I've read from Spain tell you to toast the saffron — sometimes in a dry pan,
like I'm doing here. Sometimes they do it in the hot oil later on. I'm not sure this
intensifies the flavor as much as promised, but it's easy to do so let's go with it.
Out it goes into my microwave-safe measuring jug, and while some recipes tell you to bash it up in a
mortar and pestle, I'm just gonna do as much as I can with my finger. I'm using two total cups
of liquid, just under half a liter, and half of that is gonna be plain water. Check how powerful
that pigment is already — saffron will stain your clothes, your countertops — be careful with it.
The other half of my liquid is gonna be white wine, because it's me — but
I've read lots of Spanish recipes that do use some wine, so. Of course, you could use stock
instead. And I'm just gonna heat this for a couple minutes in the microwave. Again,
tradition has it that that steeping the saffron in hot liquid will help you extract more out of it.
Eventually it's going into hot liquid anyway, in the pan, so I'm not convinced this makes
a big difference — but again, it's easy, especially if you use the microwave, so sure.
Pan is already hot, in goes some olive oil. And really, if you're using anything other than a
real paella pan, you are making a mini paella — FUN SIZE — therefore it helps to think small
with all your ingredients, hence — chicken wings. Traditional Valencian paella has big
whole chunks of chicken, maybe thighs chopped in half, plus bone-in chunks of rabbit and/or pork.
You don't have to use any meat at all if you don't want to, but six or eight chicken wings
will give you that traditional vibe of bone-in, skin-on chicken pieces,
but they'll cook much faster and they won't take up too much space in such a little pan.
I seasoned them heavily and now I'm gonna get them basically fully cooked while I prep my vegetables.
Traditional recipes often call for a grated onion. I'm using a shallot because I'm making
a small quantity and I don't need a whole big onion. And I'm just finely mincing it,
because that's easier than grating it and minced shallot cooks in seconds.
I'm mincing it up with my garlic — a few cloves, as fine as reasonably possible.
Skin-on chicken pieces are ready to flip when they release pretty easily from the
pan. Very nice color on those. Again, I want these pretty much done before everything else goes in,
because they're not gonna stew for very long with the rice and everything.
By the way, if I was doing a vegan version, I might fry some butter beans in the oil
instead — lima beans, canned and then drained. Limas are definitely traditional in paella,
even though I'm skipping them today for the sake of simplicity. I'm also skipping
the artichoke hearts, which I'd probably make time for if I wasn't also using meat.
At my store, they sell these little sweet peppers in bulk, so that's what I'm using.
A hot pepper would not be traditional and would overwhelm the saffron, so
maybe dice up half a small bell pepper if you can't get one of these, or
some of those little bottled diced pimentos would be good instead.
And then my main veg is gonna be a big handful of green beans I bought bulk at the store — very
traditional in Valencian paella. I'm just cutting them in half to make them a little easier to eat
and stir around. Again, butter beans and artichoke hearts would be traditional as well. Frozen peas
work great — put them in straight out of the freezer, just when you put the rice in — awesome.
And now that my chicken pieces are almost cooked through, I'm just softening up my sofrito in the
pan. Spanish sofrito is onion, garlic and sweet peppers, generally with tomato. Traditionally,
you might grate some fresh, whole tomatoes, discard the skins and then cook that down
with the other veg until it forms a thick, dark sauce — a paste of tomato, if you will, which is
why I'm just using a squeeze of tomato paste and I think it's gonna taste pretty similar.
Traditionally you might brown the green beans in the hot oil. To do a good job of that,
I would really have to dump out the chicken and everything else first.
Lots of paella recipes involve frying things in stages in batches,
taking them out and putting them back in again. I'm going for simplicity here,
so I'm just giving the green beans a two-minute head start before I pour in my liquid.
If you can't get saffron, by the way, just use like a teaspoon of sweet paprika. Lots of people
use paprika in addition to the saffron. If I'm gonna spring for the saffron, I want to taste it,
and the taste taste is kinda subtle so I'm just doing the saffron and nothing else.
Salt. I'm going to salt this broth until it tastes almost twice as salty as I want it. Why?
Because it's going to donate tons of salt to the rice.
Unwashed rice — we need the free starch coat clinging to the rice to bind the dish.
Any short-grain rice could work, like risotto rice. This is purportedly a real Spanish paella
rice. It'll tell you on the bag how much liquid it can absorb. Some varieties absorb
way more water than others. I'd say just follow whatever ratio is recommended on the package.
I'm doing a cup of rice to two cups liquid. You really don't have to nail the ratio,
because we're gonna have ample opportunity to either add water or boil it away later.
Once you get the rice stirred in — some people cover it, some people don't — but either way
you just let it simmer and you never stir it again. This is the main difference between
paella and risotto. Risotto you stir — you let that free starch coat and the particular
starch composition of short-grain rice thicken up the liquid until you have a nice, creamy stew.
Paella is more like a casserole than a stew. You just let it cook and set into one,
semi-solid mass. That's also perhaps a reason to steep the saffron ahead of
time — you can't really stir it around and get it evenly distributed once the rice goes in.
When the rice grains have all plumped up a bit, you can just reach in and taste
them to assess their doneness. If they're still kinda crunchy, you can easily just drizzle some
extra water wherever needed. Maybe season the water first, just to be safe. I still had some
saffron lining that jug. And I'll just drizzle some of that where I seem to have dry patches.
If, on the other hand, you seem to have put in too much water relative to the rice,
that's ok too, because here's the last step. When the rice is still a little undercooked,
you jack up the heat to boil out any excess water, thus allowing you to create the
socarrat. I'm sure I'm not pronouncing that the way they would in Valencia,
but the socarrat is this layer of browned, fried rice at the bottom of the paella.
On my stove, which is not super powerful, I find I eed to crank the burner all the way up
and then use my nose. You can smell the browning happening, and then I might pull it off the heat
when I just start to smell burning. I use the same trick when making pan pizza on the stovetop.
Off it comes, and then like any casserole, you really gotta let it rest for at least 15
minutes before scooping — give that starch matrix time to cool and solidify a bit.
If you need to keep it warm for a long time,
apparently it's traditional to cover this with a damp towel, though I'm sure a lid would be fine.
When it's time to scoop, I recommend something wide and rigid that will allow you to really
scrape the socarrat off the bottom. For my taste, I think I could have left that on the high heat
for even longer. That browned layer on the bottom is widely regarded as the best bit in the paella.
You might be wondering, where's the seafood? Well, apparently seafood isn't really traditional
in Valencian paella, which in Valencia they would say is THE traditional paella. Again,
I'm going for simple here, so I'm happy to leave out ingredients, though I'm definitely
doing the traditional lemon wedge served on the side. You squeeze that over to your liking.
See, "Heterogeneity" in food is not just something Ragusea just made up.
It's part of so many great, traditional foods — for example,
the use of bone-in meat chunks, or bivalves still in their shells. That makes it so you're not just
scooping porridge into your face. There's little bits within the dish that you pick up and eat in
a very different way — little dishes within the dish. I like that in a paella. And one more time,
I know this is not traditional paella. Nobody in Spain needs to lose their mind about this.
I'm just saying this is pretty close to the traditional while still being
as quick and user-friendly as Squarespace, the paella of website builders. It's a one-pan
marvel — absolutely everything you could possibly need to create and manage an online presence
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of cool functions that Squarespace has added since they started supporting my channel blows my mind.
You can accept payments on your site, of course, but also donations. You can paywall your content,
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It's great, and of course they host your site for you. You can build one for free, but when
you're ready to publish, save 10% using my code Ragusea at checkout. Thank you, Squarespace.
And thanks in advance to the people of Spain for not getting angry with me.
I feel like I covered all my bases with this one in terms of identifying which elements are
traditional in which ones aren't, but, well, let's just go check the comments, shall well? — Oh &%^$.