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- Now you see the trick with paella
is use just enough saffron to compliment the shellfish.
- Okay.
Oh man, that is so good.
- Hey, what's up guys,
welcome back to Binging with Babish,
where this week we're taking a look at the paella
from "Parks and Rec".
Now I've been too timid to tangle with paella for many years
because I'm afraid of it.
After all, the word paella does translate directly to,
"That isn't authentic paella."
But when Alan Yang was kind enough to give me
an amazing shout out on his podcast,
"Parks and Recollection",
and Robert Lowe himself mentioned the paella,
I knew that it was finally time.
So as you can see,
I have all the trappings of an authentic seafood paella.
To all my Spanish friends,
(Babish speaks in foreign language)
First up, we're measuring half a kilo of
(Babish speaks in foreign language)
a traditional and expensive paella rice,
covering half a pound of clams in cold water
and letting 'em sit for one to two hours.
Move slowly so they stay asleep.
And then we gotta prep our prawns.
Whole head on, big old honking prawns that we're gonna
twist the head off of, peel, and devein,
reserving the heads and shells,
because we need some really good seafood stock
for this recipe,
so I'm gonna use those to fortify some store bought stuff.
Once all but our four prettiest prawns are peeled,
we're lightly salting the peeled ones
and setting those aside for about half an hour
before cooking.
Next up, I'm chopping an onion,
because along with the prawn heads and shells,
we're throwing those into a large preheated stock pot,
where they're gonna sear and get a little bit color on them
before we deglaze with two liters of water
or store bought fish stock.
Throw in a big old handful of fresh parsley,
a few bay leaves, and peppercorns.
Hold at a gentle simmer for 30 to 45 minutes,
skimming off any scum that floats to the top.
Strain it through a fine mesh sieve, and boom,
super flavorful shellfish stock.
In addition to all the shellfish, a common ingredient
in Spanish seafood paella is cuddle fish.
So I got about five of those here,
whose beaks I'm gonna trim off,
and whom I'm going to cut into one inch, bite size pieces.
I'm also gonna grate two tomatoes on the large holes
of a box grater,
straining the results if there's too much moisture.
And with that, we're ready to make paella.
And since the only paella pan I got is huge,
we gotta do this outside.
So just throw the stuff on the stove and put it on high,
I guess, and it'll probably be fine.
I'm also seeing that aprons don't work so great with shorts.
Anyway, we got our jet engine primed.
We're gonna start by salting our paella pan,
adding some neutral flavored oil, getting it nice and hot,
and using it to sear our unpeeled prawns.
You just wanna get some solid color on the outside of these,
we're gonna finish cooking them in the paella.
So once your prawns are seared on both sides,
go ahead and fish 'em out, set 'em aside,
add a little bit more oil to the pan if necessary,
and then add our finally chopped onion,
which we're gonna sweat for one to three minutes
until they're starting to turn translucent around the edges,
adding the cuddle fish and sauteing together
for one to two minutes.
Then kinda like a stir fry,
we're gonna scoot everybody to the outside edge,
and toast one and a half teaspoons of sweet paprika
in a little bit more oil.
This stuff burns quick, so don't let it go too long.
Add your grated and drained tomatoes,
and let those cook down until no liquid remains.
And while that's cooking,
I'm gonna do something I should have done a while ago,
which is to infuse one teaspoon of saffron threads
in a little bit of our stock.
Next up we're adding our paella rice.
If you can't find paella rice, you can use Arboria rice.
And much like we would in risotto,
we're toasting the rice for about one minute.
But then we're doing the exact opposite of risotto,
adding all of our stock at once, 48 ounces worth,
plus our little bit of saffron infused stuff,
and then cooking at an aggressive simmer
without stirring at all.
The goal here is to allow the rice to cook entirely
while forming a crispy
(Babish speaks in a foreign language)
on the bottom of the pan.
After about 10 minutes, once roughly 70% of the water
has been absorbed by the rice,
we're arranging all of our seafood on top
of the rice with decorative intent.
We're then reducing the heat to medium
so that we don't burn the
(Babish speaks in foreign language)
while we finish cooking our seafood through.
Once the seafood's almost done cooking,
we're gonna kill the heat and cover the pan
with a clean cloth, letting everybody sit and settle
for 10 minutes before serving.
Lots and lots of lemons make for
positive paella presentation.
Little bit of finishing salt never hurt anybody
unless you have high blood pressure,
and this guy's ready to serve.
Now, my center was burned to a crisp.
Turns out that giant outdoor stove I have gets pretty hot,
but most of this pan has a killer crispy bottom
and tons and tons of flavor.
And Jerry Garry Larry Gergich is right,
you want just the right amount of saffron
to compliment the shellfish flavor.
I guess that's two things Ben Wyatt
and I have in common, I'm pro calzone,
and I'm pro Jerry, or Terry, whatever his name was.
Thanks again to Bright Cellars for sponsoring
today's episode.
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With the seafood paella, I'll be enjoying
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(enthusiastic rock plays)