After doing a little research on Paella, Secrets Most Chefs Don’t Want You To Know was discovered.  I didn’t go to culinary school but I love to cook and bake.  All of the cooking shows whet my appetite for cooking, but so many times they leave out key techniques or special ingredients, don’t they?

 

     Oh, yes, I am old school.  As I watched those shows, I kept thinking, “How can they do that without a recipe?  Where’s the recipe?  They have to have a recipe.”

   Then, I discovered  Chef Todd Mohr.  There are actually “methods” that chefs use!  They don’t need no stinkin’ recipes!

    Why were we, the humble homemakers, not taught this?  If you know a method, you can create your own recipes!   I’m thinking this as my eyes go to the vast array of cookbooks collected over the years!

    The method to make Paella is pretty simple but the key ingredient for this dish is rice.  If you use your regular long-grained rice, your dish will be a failure. Soggy rice.  Who knew?   Apparently, the Spanish and the trained chefs knew!

   If you have made ‘risotto’, you should know that you need ‘Arborio rice’ because that rice absorbs liquid more slowly and releases its starches in the process.  That is what makes risotto a velvety spoonful of goodness with an al dente, perfect bite, if cooked properly.

   The same kind of rice is needed for Paella, a rice that absorbs liquid more slowly. Bomba rice, which I haven’t seen at the local grocery, is commonly used for this dish but Arborio, a short-grained high-starch Italian rice, will also do.

 

   In order to achieve the yellow color of this Spanish dish, you will also need ‘saffron’, a yellow-orange flavoring from Crocus sativus.  It can be found in the spice aisle.  At the local grocery, a .03 ounce jar was priced at almost fourteen bucks and a jar with .06 ounces, twice the amount, was almost twenty dollars!  It’s not a cheap spice.  Actually, it is the most expensive spice in the world but only a very small amount is needed.  Two to three strands per person should be sufficient.  A dish for 6 people might use 12 to 18 strands.

 

 

Paella – The Basic Method

 Heat your large flat skillet until a drop of water dances and evaporates quickly.

 Add olive oil to the skillet and heat until you can see striations or streaks of oil forming.  Then, the pan should be the right temperature.  (If you’ve been cooking for awhile, you’ve seen this before.)

 Saute your meats like chicken, chorizo, or beef.   If you’ve never cooked with chorizo before, it kind of turns into more of a sauce than a sausage.  You can see it in the pan here.  It just lends a wonderful flavor to the dish.  

 The chorizo came in a pork or beef option.  I chose the pork for this dish.

 

Add Bomba or Arborio rice and coat with the olive oil in the pan.  (Coating the rice in oil helps slow the absorption of liquid, too.)

 Add chopped aromatic vegetables like onion, tomatoes, garlic, and peppers.

At this point, I also added a *tablespoon of Spanish Paprika and stirred it in well.

*(I used 1-1/2 cups of rice for this dish. You might adjust the paprika if you use less rice.)

Deglaze the pan with chicken stock or stock of your choosing, which has been simmering in another pan with the saffron.   Use twice as much stock as rice.  (In total, I actually used more stock than that for this dish.)  Add the stock a cup or so at a time, stir, allow to absorb into the rice, and then add more.

  When the rice is almost done, add the meat, which was browned earlier.  Don’t forget to add any juices left in the pan or platter along with the meat.  Add lobster, shrimp, clams or muscles, which are a little more delicate and don’t need to cook as long.  (I cut the lobster tails in half lengthwise.)

Cover with a lid.  Simmer on low until the rice has absorbed all of the liquid and the meat is done.

    Half-way through this dish, I was a little nervous!  Aidan and I tasted the broth and rice and it seemed a little spicy.   When the seafood on top was done, I took it off the heat, covered it and let it rest for a few minutes before serving. 

   Let me tell you, this was one of the best tasting dishes I have ever had!  The lobster was perfect.  The shrimp was perfect and the chicken was tender and delicious!  The rice was delicious and not too spicy at all!  

    The kids all agreed that we should have this again, soon.  Paella – Secrets Some Chefs Don’t Want You To Know – revealed here!   Now you are armed with the knowledge to make your own version of Paella!

   This post has been shared on “Fridays Feature Party.”