Dona paella - a classic recipe with seafood

A little more and you will learn how to prepare the divine Spanish dish called paella. Paella , more precisely “paeya” (Spanish Paella) is a Spanish (Valencian) dish, the constant ingredient of which is rice, traditionally served on Sunday or St. Joseph’s Day. The rice in this famous Valencian dish can be dressed with anything: seafood, vegetables, sausage, chicken, etc. In Spain, the preparation of “black paella” is not complete without cuttlefish. After all, it is she who releases substances that give the color of the dish a rich black color.

A variety of paella “rice with crust” can be prepared by anyone, since the ingredients included in the dish are available to everyone. It includes: rice, chicken broth, tomatoes, garlic, chicken, white and blood sausage, sausages, eggs and saffron. Naturally, as in any form of art, as well as in culinary art, Spanish cuisine has only its own characteristic features. For anyone who is familiar or wants to get acquainted with Spanish cuisine, we can offer a simple paella recipe.

History of the origin of the dish

Paella is the queen of the Spanish table. But before becoming queen, it was a common poor man's food. There is a legend that there lived one fisherman, he was poor. And then one day, when he was walking along the seashore, he met a beautiful girl. Looking into her eyes, he could not contain his admiration. Her eyes resembled the color of the sea. He loved her with all his heart. One day, he invited her to his hut. But what to do, he didn’t know what to treat her with. And then he put a wide frying pan on the fire and poured oil into it. And he added everything he had at home, snails, eel and green beans. Then, after thinking a little, I decided to add snails, shrimp and mussels and added some rice. When he prepared the dish, after tasting it he exclaimed “paella,” which meant “for her.”

Over time, paella became a favorite dish in the country. Where, according to the great writer of Spain, Julio Camba, it causes such delight. What can only be compared with football, carnival and the Virgin Mary.

Paella with chicken

You will need:

• 500 gr. chicken meat;
• 250 gr. round rice or arabio;
• 250 gr. green peas;
• 1 medium sized onion;
• Bell pepper;
• 2 cloves of garlic;
• 4 tomatoes or 70 gr. tomato paste;
• a pinch of saffron;
• 0.25 liters of meat broth;
• pepper and salt;
• olive oil.

Wash and chop the chicken meat. Fry until nice golden brown. In another large, heavy-bottomed frying pan, sauté the diced onion and garlic in olive oil. Once the onion becomes translucent, add the diced pepper and fry the vegetables for a few minutes. Pour the rice into the pan and add a little oil and, stirring, cook over low heat for 3-5 minutes.

Add fried chicken, saffron, tomato paste, salt, peas and broth to the rice, mix everything, when the mixture boils, cook it over low heat for 20-25 minutes, during which time the liquid should evaporate and the rice should become soft. When the chicken paella is cooked, cover the pan and let it sit for 5-10 minutes.

Thursday is considered World Paella Day.

Why Thursday, you ask? The fact is that to prepare paella, you need seafood. Since the catching of seafood always began on Monday and the seafood always reached the port only on Thursday. And, the most interesting thing is that Thursday in Spain was a day off for servants. And, the local rich people, on this day they always dined in restaurants where they served the best and most delicious paella.

So, paella means a frying pan with two handles. Exactly, paella was cooked in such a frying pan. And everyone sat around and ate from it, a delicious dish with wooden spoons.

If Thursday is world paella day, then at home such a day was considered Sunday. And, during folk festivals, they display a tripod with a frying pan in the squares.

By the way, the largest paella was prepared in 2001. To prepare it, it took 6,000 kilograms of rice and 12,500 kilograms of meat. Construction cranes and special rakes were used to mix the paella.

How to cook the most delicious paella?

In order to prepare a classic Spanish paella recipe, you need to follow a few rules;

On a slightly windy, sunny and festively warm day. Gather your friends and loved ones, those dear to your heart. Light a fire using dry grapevines or orange logs. Then, the smoke will give a pleasant aroma to the paella......

So, pour olive oil into the pan. And, twist the pan so that it is well distributed over the entire diameter of the pan.

Then add a few cloves of peeled garlic. Fry until golden brown, and be sure to remove from the pan with boiling oil.

Wash the shrimp, dry it, and if they are very large, cut them in half. If not, then you can fry it without cutting it. After frying, remove them from the oil and put them in a separate bowl. So, shrimp, then return to the paella a few minutes before it's ready. Or place it on a prepared dish. Wash the meat, dry it and cut it into small pieces and add to the boiling oil.

How to cook vegetable paella

How to cook vegetable paella Light, but very filling vegetable paella is just right for summer and warm May days. This wonderful and healthy dish is paella, the recipe with photos of which we provide you with.

We will tell you in more detail how to prepare paella with vegetables, thanks to which you will understand that eating this vegetable paella is a whole ritual that incorporates hot, blood-stirring, southern accents. And how intriguing will the dish look on the table, i.e. in the very center of the table and in the frying pan. This will remind us of the upcoming summer and travel. By the way, Spanish paella is prepared in this quantity, and this quantity should be eaten at dinner or lunch. You can use any vegetables for paella, or you can use those that we indicated in the recipe.

Ingredients:

• Four handfuls of round paella rice (long rice will not work for vegetable paella)
• saffron
• one small zucchini
• 1/2 each red and green sweet pepper
• 2 large carrots and tomatoes without peel
• 100 grams of pumpkin
• 2 fresh artichokes
• some green frozen peas
• 6 green beans
• five stalks of green asparagus
• vegetable broth or water
• salt to taste, olive oil

Preparation:

1. Prepare all the vegetables by first cutting them into equal pieces. Cut out the center of the artichokes, peel them and then cut into thin slices. Before frying, vegetables should be stored in a deep container with lemon and cold water to prevent them from darkening.
2. Heat a little olive oil in a frying pan and sauté, stirring all the time. You should not leave the pan until you add rice to it.
3. Add onions in stages, then pumpkin, carrots, peppers, green beans, peas and artichokes.
4. Lastly, you should add peeled and pureed tomatoes; to do this, you need to put them in boiling water for one minute, and then remove the skins from them.
5. To turn the tomatoes into puree, use your home assistant - a blender.
6. If you don't have it, just chop the tomatoes. Add zucchini to pan. Add some salt.
7. After the zucchini paella, cook for another three minutes, and then you can add broth or water.
8. You should add water so that all the vegetables are completely covered.
9. Bring all this Spanish joy to a boil over high heat, add rice and add saffron at the end.
10. Leave to simmer over medium heat, shaking the pan periodically, but do not disturb the rice.
11. No need to add salt. So, when the rice is almost ready (it should be a little hard inside), turn off the heat and leave the paella to stand for five minutes before serving.

Bon appetit!

Vegetables - paella recipe classic with seafood

Wash vegetables, green beans, tomatoes and bell peppers. Remove the skin from the tomatoes and chop finely. Oh, you can read about how to properly remove the skin from a tomato in my article Gazpacho - a classic cooking recipe.

Cut the green beans in half. Ah, bell pepper, remove the stalk, clean out the seeds, cut into two parts, and then into half rings. And send all the prepared vegetables to the meat in boiling oil. Then add water and let it boil a little.

Into the bubbling liquid, carefully and slowly, place the rice in thin strips crosswise. I can say that the rice cross looks simply incredibly beautiful. Then, very quickly you need to level it with a wooden spatula or a wooden spoon over the entire diameter of the pan.

Add a small pinch of saffron. What spices are suitable for preparing this dish?

Garlic, saffron and ground sweet red pepper are suitable for it. I do not recommend using other spices.

Cover the pan with a lid and simmer over low heat until the rice is cooked. Then remove the paella from the heat. And let it sit for a while so that the rice finally absorbs the liquid.

Now, I introduced you to the recipe for making classic paella.

Based on the classic recipe, you can prepare the three most popular types of Spanish paella. It's seafood, mixed paella and Valencian.

Ingredients for seafood paella:

• 8 shrimp
• 2 cuttlefish or 5 squid
• mussels and other shellfish to taste
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 onion
• 3 bell peppers
• 2 tomatoes
• 400 grams of round rice. Perfect Arroz Bomba (also known as arroz de Valencia)
• olive oil
• saffron
• 1.5 liters of fish broth

The process of preparing paella for 4 people will take 60 minutes if the broth is ready.

Note : You can buy ready-made frozen seafood kits in Spanish supermarkets. For example, at Consum, a kilogram mix with a frozen cocktail of shrimp, squid and cuttlefish costs €5.6. But in addition to it, buy raw shrimp and shell seafood in bulk, which you will put on top of your paella.

Broth in Spain is also sold in Mercadona, Consum or other supermarkets. If you want to cook everything yourself, we are sharing a recipe for broth for paella with seafood.

Ingredients for broth:

• water – 1.5 liters
• the spine, tail and head of a fish (such as salmon or monkfish)
• shrimp heads – 8 pieces
• one medium onion
• garlic – 4 cloves
• carrots – 1 piece
• leek
• white wine – half a glass (100 ml)
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper

Rice-paella recipe classic with seafood

The best rice for paella is Spanish rice. The king of Spanish rice is rice under the unusual name bomba. Why rice, because it absorbs water well. Most importantly, dear readers, never use flavored rice to prepare paella; paella will also turn out unsuccessful if you use steamed or long-grain rice. Since it is not always possible to buy rice that is specifically intended for paella, I suggest using rice for pilaf.

Valencian paella - classic paella recipe with seafood

So, pour oil into the frying pan and distribute it over the entire diameter. Cut the meat, it’s good if it’s on the bone, into small pieces. And fry until golden brown. Over medium heat

Then add chopped vegetables to the meat. Lastly, peel the tomatoes and leave them to simmer under the lid closed.

The roast is ready. If fried vegetables and tomatoes are a little sour, it would be a good idea to add a little sugar. Next, add ground sweet pepper and stir continuously until cooked.

By the way, when adding ground sweet pepper when preparing any dish, you must stir. Because if it burns, it will be bitter. Oh, we don’t need that.

Then add a small amount of saffron.

Rinse the rice and place it in the same way as I described above when preparing the classic recipe. Now the most important thing is to control the cooking of the rice.

First, cook the dish for about 9-11 minutes over high heat. The second stage of cooking is to reduce the heat to medium. Cook for about 6-8 minutes. Since all the rules were followed during cooking, the excess water should have evaporated; if this did not happen, then leave for another minute or two minutes.

then increase the heat so that we have a toasted crust of rice. The Spaniards call it soccarat.

If you see that the rice is not ready, then add it, and the liquid has evaporated, then add a little broth or water, put it on the fire and bring the rice until cooked. Then increase the heat again to get a crispy crust.

Paella with seafood

You will need:

• 400 gr. round grain rice;
• a pair of large onions;
• a couple of tomatoes;
• olive oil;
• 0.5 kg of mussels in shells;
• 8 large shrimp;
• 250 gr. squid rings;
• 4 medium cloves of garlic;
• a couple of sweet peppers;
• 1 carrot;
• a bunch of parsley;
• a whisper of saffron, bay leaf, salt.

Peel the onions, garlic and carrots. Remove the heads, shells and intestinal veins from the shrimp. Separate the leaves from the parsley. Place the shrimp shells and heads in a saucepan, add water and wait until it boils. Add carrots, 2 cloves of garlic, onion, bay leaf, parsley stems and salt. Cook for 30 minutes and strain the resulting broth.

Peel and then chop the tomatoes. Core the peppers and cut them into thin strips. Combine 2 cloves of garlic with parsley and grind into a paste. Dilute the saffron with a small amount of water.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and place the washed midi in it, wait until they open and transfer to any suitable container. Place the peeled shrimp in the frying pan, soak them for 3 minutes, remove and transfer to the mussels.

Place tomatoes, crushed garlic, and squid in a frying pan and fry them for 4 minutes. Add the rice, stirring, cook for 6 minutes, add the pepper and cook the mixture for another 4 minutes. Pour the broth, saffron, salt into the pan, add mussels and shrimp and cook the rice until cooked.

Seafood paella

Remove paella from heat and let rest for five minutes. Seafood paella is prepared according to this principle: first, unpeeled shrimp are fried, then removed from the oil onto a separate plate. And, cuttlefish and squid, pre-wash and cut into small portions and also fry until golden brown.

Then add finely chopped garlic and vegetables, bell peppers, tomatoes and green beans. Pre-cut the vegetables, beans into small pieces, peppers into half rings, and tomatoes into cubes, after removing the skin. Then pour in the broth.

Since we are preparing seafood paella, fish broth works well here.

How to make a delicious broth, read my article fish broth.

First boil the shellfish in the shells and add them to the broth after it boils, then add the rice and cook according to the principle described above.

Paella with vegetables

You will need:

• 1 cup long grain rice;
• 2 sweet peppers;
• 1 medium sized onion;
• 4 tomatoes;
• 3 medium cloves of garlic;
• a pinch of saffron;
• 150 g, fresh green beans;
• 700 ml. chicken broth;
• pepper and salt.

To prepare paella, start by preparing the vegetables. Wash them, peel the onions and garlic, remove the skin from the tomatoes, the hard tails from the beans, and the core from the peppers. Cut the garlic into thin slices, the onion into half rings, the pepper into strips, the tomatoes into cubes, the beans into pieces 2 cm long.

Fry the onion, pepper and garlic for about 4 minutes in a frying pan with heated oil. Add rice and saffron to them, stirring, fry them for 3 minutes over high heat. Add the broth and tomatoes, bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 1/4 hour over low heat. Add the beans, pepper and salt, and simmer the paella with vegetables over low heat for about 10 minutes.

Mixed paella

If you are preparing mixed paella, then the meat should be fried after the shrimp have been fried. As you already understood, we fry the shrimp, remove them from the oil, then add the meat cut into portions and only after that, cuttlefish and squid, after cutting them, then vegetables and rice. And prepare as described above.

As a result, the most delicious and simple recipe for making paella at home is ready.

Chicken paella with vegetables and shrimp

I would like to bring to your attention one more recipe. So, wash the chicken fillet, dry it and cut it into small cubes. Wash the shrimp and dry. Bell pepper, seeded and cut into strips. Cut the green beans into pieces 3-4 cm long.

Fry shrimp and peppers in olive oil for about three minutes, transfer to a plate. And, place pieces of meat in a frying pan and fry over high heat until golden brown.

Add rice and stir-fry for about two minutes, add chicken broth and cook over medium heat until the rice is half cooked. Then lay out the beans, add salt to taste, season with saffron, paprika and pepper. Close the lid and simmer until the rice is ready over low heat. Five minutes before the end of cooking, add pepper and shrimp.

Pour lemon juice over the finished paella and sprinkle with finely chopped parsley. As a result, paella with chicken and vegetables, with the addition of shrimp, is ready.

You can replace the chicken with rabbit, it will also turn out very tasty.

Traditional paella at home

After learning so many interesting things about Spanish cuisine, a logical question arises: what kind of dish is paella? Maybe this is a culinary symbol of beautiful Spain, which is almost impossible to prepare in an ordinary kitchen, or is it still a dish accessible to everyone? We have chosen the simplest, classic method of preparing paella, for which you will need the following ingredients:

• round rice - 200 g
• chicken (leg) - 300 g
• rabbit meat (leg) - 300 g
• frozen green peas - 1 can
• bell pepper - 2 pcs.
• leek - 1 pc.
• tomato juice, preferably tomato gusto - 100 ml
• water - 750 ml
• saffron infusion – 150 ml
• rosemary - 1 sprig
• saffron – 10 threads (for saffron infusion)
• olive oil - for frying
• salt - to taste

Prepare a saffron infusion by pouring a small amount of boiling water over 10 threads of saffron. When the water has cooled, add a little more boiling water. And then a little more - and so on 3-4 times.

Wash the chicken and rabbit, chop them into small pieces. Fry the meat in olive oil until golden brown for 5 minutes.

Chop the leeks and bell peppers and add them to the meat, then fry for a few more minutes. Then pour in the tomato juice and mix all the ingredients well for a while. As soon as the juice darkens a little, pour water into them and cook for 10 minutes.

Add rosemary, salt, saffron infusion and green peas to the broth. Continue cooking over medium heat. Remove rosemary from broth.

Add the rice and cook for 10 minutes on high heat, 10 minutes on low heat and again 1 minute on high. If you see that the rice is not cooked yet, keep the paella on the fire for another 5 minutes, but try to lift the lid less often and do not stir. Let the paella sit for 10 minutes, covered, before serving.

Try enjoying paella Spanish style by placing the pan on the table and setting out the spoons. Agree that such a meal brings you closer together.