If you put rice into stock and boil it down until you get a demi-glace, and then you burn
it a little, you’ll get a paella, which is one of the world’s most glorious rice
dishes.
Here is what’s important to me in a paella. The rice texture needs to be perfect -- toothsome,
but not chalky. There needs to be a lot of socarrat, that delicious crust. And the stock
needs to be gelatinous and sticky. That’s what gives this dish its amazing depth of
flavor and slightly sticky texture. I’ve been working on this recipe for more than
a year. Paella is hard, but today I’ll tell you all the nuances of making a great paella
at home on a normal stove with a normal skillet.
The pan Here is the pan I make my paella in. It’s
my 12 inch cuisinart pan with straight sides. The straight sides give me more cooking area,
which means more crust. This pan produces 4 portions. A 12 inch skillet with sloped
sides will give you way less cooking area and you’ll need to scale down the recipe
to only 2 to 3 portions.
I know that paella pans are sold in every single cooking store and on amazon and they
can be bought for as little as $20 for a 15 inch pan. I’ve tried pans like that and
they are crap -- they warp, then burn, they cook insanely unevenly.
It’s impossible to buy a good quality pan that huge for less than $100 and then you
are stuck with this big, hard to store, specialized pan that you use 3 times a year. I have seen
cast iron and carbon steel paella pans for less than $100, but given that paella is a
wet dish that contains tomatoes, how well seasoned is that pan going to stay, especially
if it’s only used a few times a year.
The pan is everything with this dish, so choose wisely.
The rice Bomba would be the most typical rice used
in a paella. I know many people recommend using arborio or some other risotto rice for
paella, but I wasn’t very happy with the results that it produced. I know that Spanish
rice is hard to find in supermarkets, so I buy it on Amazon. After trying different varieties,
I settled on Calasparra rice. It’s usually more affordable than Bomba and produces great
results.
The stock If you want a good paella, you need a homemade
gelatinous stock. My chicken stock videos are linked below. You are welcome to use any
chicken stock as long as it looks like this after chilling. Boxed stock is a no-go for
this dish since it doesn’t have enough gelatin.
Now that we know all about the pan, the rice, and the stock, we are ready to cook.
Let’s dry 4 chicken thighs very thoroughly on paper towels. Moisture is the enemy of
browning, so we need to get rid of it.
Trim any skin and fat that’s sticking out, but don’t discard them. We’ll brown this
trim in the skillet before cooking our paella. Between those brown bits and the stock, our
paella will have plenty of chicken flavor even though we’ll be cooking the chicken
thighs separately. Yes, I know. It’s heretical. But the authentic paella usually results in
dry meat and flabby skin because rice and chicken don’t exactly like the same cooking
environments. So I cook them separately.
Salt the chicken on all sides and coat in a tiny bit of my standard grilling glaze.
The recipe for the glaze is in the description below. It’s optional, but produces way better
flavor and browning. In case you are familiar with this glaze from my other videos and wonder
why this one looks so much darker, it’s because I use less oil than my original recipe
calls for when working with fatty cuts like chicken thighs. People frequently ask me why
my glaze looks so much thicker than theirs. That’s because my was refrigerated. I always
keep it on hand, but if you just made a batch and yours is runny, don’t worry, it will
work just fine.
Put the chicken in the fridge until ready to use. It can sit there happily for a couple
of days, but it can also be used immediately. Turn on the oven to 450F.
Set the pan you are using for paella over high heat. Add a couple of teaspoons of olive
oil and wait for it to get hot. Swirl the pan to coat it evenly and sprinkle a thin
layer of salt on the bottom of the pan. Place the chicken skin that you trimmed from the
thighs into the pan laying it out as flat as possible. While our chicken skin is browning,
let’s prep some veggies.
My favorite veggies for paella are carrots, mushrooms, and green beans. For mushrooms,
I am using shiitake. Their stems are too tough, so I like to cut them out before slicing the
caps. The ideal green beans for paella are the flat Spanish ones, or the sturdy romano
beans, but since I couldn’t find any, I am using the skinny green beans.
Let’s flip the skin and move it around so that all parts of the pan get some action.
Before things get too smoky, let’s move all the skin to one corner and add the veggies
and a pinch of salt. This way we can continue to brown the skin a little more without having
all those empty parts of the pan smoking and burning.
Ok, I think our skin has done its job and it’s time to remove it. I just discard it,
but you can use it any way you want.
Now our veggies can really spread out. You are welcome to improvise with the veggie types,
but make sure you don’t crowd the pan too much. In order for them to brown well, they
need to be close to a single layer.
When you get good browning, like this, give them a stir, and let them brown again.
Once things are looking really brown, turn down the heat to low and get the veggies out
of the pan.
Now let’s make the sofrito, which is the flavor base for our paella. Add 1 diced yellow
onion and 1 diced red pepper (a yellow or orange pepper would work too). A pinch of
salt, a glug of olive oil and cook over low to medium heat stirring occasionally until
the onions are translucent and the veggies are golden brown. Be patient, this step takes
a while. The reason we are not cooking onions and peppers with the other veggies is that
we want them to get soft enough to almost dissolve into the paella. The carrots, mushrooms,
and green beans are different. I want them to punctuate my paella and be noticeable.
While the peppers and onions are cooking, place a well seasoned cast iron pan in the
bottom third of the oven to preheat it for the chicken.
Let’s check up on the veggies. Looking good. Our onions are completely tender. I know this
because they look translucent and the veggies are starting to brown. Let’s add a couple
of cloves of minced garlic, a tiny bit more olive oil and salt, and cook stirring for
a minute.
Time for spices. We’ll need a big pinch of saffron. Saffron is hard to measure, but
here is how much I use. Crumble it up and add to the pan along with a teaspoon of spanish
smoked paprika. Cook stirring for a minute to get the aroma going. Add ¼ cup of dry
white wine and ¼ cup of chopped canned or boxed tomatoes. Crank up the heat to high
and boil down into a very thick paste. Don’t rush this step. You really want all this moisture
gone.
Add 3 and a half cups of chicken stock and turn up the heat to bring the stock to a boil.
Season it carefully with salt. My stock is unsalted so I need a good bit of salt. If
yours is salted, you won’t need as much. I used to worry about salting the stock fully
at this stage since it will reduce so much, but eventually I found that if it tastes just
right now, it will taste just right in the end.
Although the stock will reduce a lot, the rice that is going into it is completely unseasoned,
so it will all work out. Fixing paella seasoning later is very difficult because it’s not
ok to stir the rice. If you start stirring it, you’ll get a gooey starchy dish like
a risotto. Right now is your chance to get the seasoning right, so seize that moment.
When the stock comes to a boil. Sprinkle 250g of rice evenly over the stock. It will look
like very little rice (just a cup and a ¼). That’s normal. That’s how we’ll get
a thin layer of rice with a great crust.
Give the rice a little stir to make sure it settles evenly over the bottom and that’s
the last time we are going to stir it. Scatter the veggies on top of rice. I like to keep
them on top instead of mixing them in. They make a sort of blanket over the rice keeping
it submerged in the stock as long as possible. Lower the heat enough so that you get a very
active simmer. I set mine to about medium. We want the stock to be evaporating and concentrating
fairly quickly since our whole cooking time will be only 18 to 20 minutes.
Get the cast iron pan out of the oven and place the chicken into it skin-side down.
Return the pan to the bottom third of the oven for about 12 minutes. If you have a convection
fan, turn it on. Without a convection fan, the first side might take 15 to 18 minutes.
After 12 minutes or so, you’ll see the rice poking through the veggies and it’s time
to turn down the heat to moderately low to give the rice a chance to finish cooking before
all they stock is gone.
This is also a good time to flip your chicken. Make sure you get the tongs under the skin
so that you don’t leave it stuck to the pan, and pull up each piece very slowly, so
that the skin doesn’t rip. Turn down the oven to 400F, turn off the convection fan
if you were using it and let the chicken finish cooking for another 6 to 8 minutes or until
it reaches 170F. Conveniently this will happen right around the time your paella is close
to being done.
It’s been around 18 minutes since we put the rice in. That’s usually the time when
most of the stock is absorbed. Taste the rice on top. If it feels tough. Cover the pan for
a couple of minutes and keep cooking it on low heat.
When the rice is close to being done, but not completely there yet, it’s time to make
the crust. Poke some holes in the rice with the back of a wooden spoon or something similar.
Collect all the fat from the pan with the chicken and pour it into these holes in the
rice. This will help produce nice browning. Turn the heat up to medium and let the rice
cook for a few minutes.
During this time, you want to rotate the pan 90 degrees every 30 seconds since no burners
cook perfectly evenly. After the first minute, start checking how your crust is doing. Poke
through the rice with a teaspoon and see if the rice on the bottom is stuck. If it’s
not stuck, keep going. If it feels stuck, make a slightly bigger hole and see if it’s
dark. You might want to check in a few spots since no burners cook perfectly evenly. Once
it feels both stuck and dark, take the paella off the heat.
Taste the top of the rice again. If it’s completely done to your liking, cover the
pan with a dish towel to absorb the extra moisture. If it’s still a tad firm, like
mine is, cover the pan with a lid. Whether you use a towel or a lid, let the paella rest
for 10 minutes. This step is crucial for good rice texture. Don’t worry that your chicken
will get cold. It needs to rest too. During this time the top rice will finish cooking
and the bottom crust will loosen slightly making it easier to get out of the pan.
Place the chicken on top. Garnish with some lemon wedges and serve. The best way to get
the crust out of the pan is with a flat metal spatula.
I know this was not a very traditional way to make a paella, but every single component
came out perfectly. This rice is so wicked good, I have no words for it. And the chicken
is not something we just sacrificed to the paella. It’s a fantastic chicken. You can
make it without a paella if you want to.
Oops, I totally forgot. Give your plate a little squirt of lemon to contrast with all
this richness.
A few tips on mastering this tricky dish. Pretty much everything in a paella relies
on your intuition about what’s salty enough, what’s brown enough, what’s crispy enough.
This is not something you can just put on the scale or stick a thermometer into. As
always keep notes and try to buy enough ingredients to make a paella 2 days in one week. It would
be a miracle if your first try came out just right. Depending on the exact rice, the skillet,
the stove, and the heat settings you use, you might need more or less stock. If you
end up with rice that’s too soft, use a bit less stock next time. If you end up with
rice that’s too hard, use a bit more stock.
If you want to simplify your life, skip the chicken entirely. Don’t worry about browning
the chicken skin before cooking the veggies. Pour in a few tablespoons of olive oil into
the pan and start with that. When I use the rendered chicken fat to brown the socarrat
in the end, just use olive oil.
A quick reply to all the criticism I am going to get on the authenticity or lack thereof.
If you are a cook from Valencia, please realize that my goal was not to bastardize your dish,
but to understand its nature, its fundamental principles and to use them with the ingredients
and the equipment available to me.
Here are more thought provoking culinary tutorials for you to check out and a link to my online
classes is in the description below.