An easy way to recreate the flavours of Spain from home. Serves 4.
Note: The essential ingredients in a paella are paella rice, smoked paprika and saffron. As long as you have those three components, you can use your imagination and still produce a paella. So if you would prefer to use seafood, wine or different seasonal veggies then go for it!
Ingredients (from The Deli)
2 tablespoons Avocado Oil
1 tsp Liquid Garlic
1 pot Saffron Powder
1/2 tin San Marzano Tomatoes
500ml Freja Bone Broth
300g Bomba Rice
150g Chorizo Piccante
1 tsp salt
From Elsewhere (we recommend Hedgehog Organics and Peter Healey Butchers)
2 Chicken Breasts
1/2 bunch Flat Leaf Parsley
1/2 bunch Flat Leaf Parsley
1/3rd Red Pepper
150g Frozen Peas
1 tsp Smoked Paprika
1 Lemon
Steps
Start by preparing all your ingredients. Proteins want to be in bite sized pieces, onion diced nice and small and the peppers into long, thin strips. We grated our tomatoes to make them really fine, but you could also use a passata or chop them as finely as you can.
Heat a tablespoon of oil in a paella pan. If you don’t own a paella pan, you can use a heavy bottomed frying pan, casserole dish or anything similar. Whatever you use, it needs to be as wide as possible so you can spread the contents of the pan over as wide an area as possible.
Add the chicken and fry until lightly coloured. You’re not cooking the chicken at this stage, just getting some colour onto it. If you think it needs more oil at this stage then add more, but make sure you scrape the pan to get any sticky bits off. When the chicken is a nice golden colour, remove from the pan.
Repeat the step above with the chorizo. The chorizo will release a nice orange/red oil which is important for the next step.
Add another tablespoon of oil to the pan (if needed) and add the diced red onion and liquid garlic and fry the onion until it starts to go translucent. Add the bomba rice and stir to coat all the grains in oil. Continue to heat and stir for a couple of minutes until the grains start to get translucent.
Add the tomatoes, paprika, 1 tsp of salt and saffron and stir well to combine. Add the Freja stock along with 350ml of boiling water and the peppers and stir well. Simmer on a medium heat for around five minutes until you can see the grains of rice starting to plump up under the surface of the stock.
Taste the stock and add more salt if needed and give the paella a good stir. This is your last chance to disturb the paella, so if you’re worried that the meat is all clumped together then this is your time to finish your masterpiece.
Turn the heat to low and simmer for another 15 minutes. Do not stir the paella – a characteristic of paella is the crispy, almost charred underneath which only comes about from being undisturbed. During this 15 minutes, you should see the rice expand and the stock disappear. After about 10 minutes, there should be only a little liquid around the side of the paella and the grains, if tasted, should be slightly nutty. If you’re worried that the grains are undercooked then add a little more water.
After 15 minutes, turn off the heat and let the paella sit for 10 minutes. Garnish with chopped parsley, lemon wedges and serve!
