Classic Spanish Paella
I absolutely love Paella and have often dreamed of cooking my own over the years but it always seemed so complicated with special pans and burners. Well it’s not 🙂 Its really a rather simple meal and loads of fun to cook and as close as I have rtasted to what I have had is mainland Spain before.
Ingredients
- Large pinch of Saffron strands
- 600ml vegetable stock
- 3 tbsp Olive oil
- 125g Chopped Chorizo
- 500g boneless chicken thigh sliced to about 1′ strips
- 1 large onion chopped
- 3 cloves garlic finely chopped
- 1 red pepper finely chopped
- 2 tsp smoked paprika
- 250 g paella rice
- 4 rough chopped tomatoes
- 75 g frozen peas
- bag of mixed frozen seafood thawed
- 200 g prawns either shelled or in the shell if you want to show off
- Handful of parsley and lemon wedges to serve
Method.
Stir the saffron into the stock to infuse. then with your bbq set at 180c direct heat pop on a heavy cast pan, I normally use a shallow 15″ pan here (bottom photo) and its perfect but today the photos are with a 10″ pan (half recipe) just 2 of us. Firstly fry off the chorizo fir a few minutes then remove from the pan ready for later, this is an important step because it gets the flavour profile going in the pan. then fry the chicken until its cooked about 8 minutes and then remove and set aside. Next fry the onion and garlic adding a little more oil if needed and then once softened add the pepper and paprika.
Stir in the rice and coat with all the oily goodness then Stir in the stock along with another 450ml boiling water giving the pan a real good scrape as you stir. then once back boiling add the tomatoes, chicken and chorizo and cook for 10 minutes. Then add the seafood and give a good stir and cook until the seafood is hot or cooked (obviously if you use raw prawns cook them through) Remove from the heat and rest for 5 minutes then cover in the parsley and add some lemon wedges.
Tips.
This is a fabulous meal and works without the seafood too but better with imo. Great served with my Pampushki tear and share bread
If you cooked this or any of my recipes then please do let me know how it went, I would love some feedback.
