Where does Paella come from?

Paella Valenciana is the most typical dish from Valencia and Spain. What is it? Well, actually is a food made of rice, chicken meat, rabbit meat, fresh vegetables and snails. It may sound weird and nasty but, the real thing is that the taste is delicious. Nevertheless, either rabbit meat and snails are optional for the recipe.

Within this webpage, you are going to see how to prepare the traditional recipe, with all the ingredients above. You may find Paella made with seafood, but that is a different type of it. If you are interested in how this type of paella is made, we can show you in another post.

In this page, we are going to explain how to do the Paella step by step, with some Pro Tips that will make your Paella taste delicious. I strongly recommend also to buy fresh meat in the butcher’s shop instead of shopping in the big supermarkets.

What is the origin of Paella?

This is the most famous and better-known recipe from Valencia, one of the main cities of Spain. Every tourist tries it when they visit the country.

This food came from the rural areas of Valencia, because the farmers and shepherds needed a food easy to prepare with the ingredients they had in the countryside. The used to eat it during the evening.

In the origin of Paella, the ingredients were the birds, country rabbit and the fresh vegetables they could get from the countryside, with the rice, saffron and olive oil. They used to cook it with actual fire made with orange tree firewood that provided the food with a characteristic and special smell and taste.

In Spain, there is also a legend talking about Paella and a woman that used to make it. When Frenchs conquered Spain, one of the generals were so impressed with paella that he tried to make a deal with the woman: everyday she makes him a different type of Paella, he would free a prisoner. The woman used her imagination and her strong resourcefulness and made a different type of paella every single day. It is said that she could free 176 prisoners.

Ingredients:

• 600 g of rice.
• 300 g of chicken meat.
• 200 g of rabbit meat.
• 250 g of mixed green and white beans.
• 1 can of crashed tomato or 2 small diced tomatoes.
• 1 spoonful of sweet red pepper.
• 1 spoonful of food colouring or 1/3 spoonful of saffron.
• 1 garlic clove.
• 20 fresh or frozen snails.
• 1 to 2 litres of chicken stock.
• Salt
• Extra Virgin olive oil.
• Water

Time of preparation: 1 hour.

How to cook Paella:

First step: Ingredients preparation.

The first step is to clean the vegetables. If you are going to use frozen beans, you have to wait for them to defrost. The best part of using frozen vegetables is that you don’t need to clean and cut it.

When you have all the vegetables defrost and chopped, is time to slice the garlic and dice the onion.

Now is time to start with the meat. We have to cut both types of meat in homogeneous pieces.

Once we have everything cut and clean, we should put the pan in the fire with some olive oil inside.

Top Tip: is advisable to prepare the ingredients in a properly way to make the cooking of the Paella more comfortable. Firstly, we have to take out all the necessary ingredients for the Paella and clean them. If we have space we should also take all the plates, knifes, etc. out too. The previous preparation will allow you to face the cooking with more calm because you don’t need to search anything when you are in the middle of the preparation.

Top Tip: is important to start with the meat when you have already finished with the vegetables for hygiene reasons. And the size of the pieces is also important, if they are homogeneous, all the meat will be equally cooked.

Second step: Fry the meat.

When the olive oil is hot enough, you can start to fry the meat over a low heat. The chicken and rabbit meat should fry until golden.

When the meat gets a good golden colour, is when we know the meat is ready to make a good Paella Valenciana.

Top Tip: is important to cook the meat with low heat, if not, it will burn. Is advisable to move the meat from time to time, to let it get a homogeneous cook.

Third step: Fry all the ingredients.

Now that the meat has a beautiful golden colour, we add the vegetables and the garlic. We have to be very careful neither the meat, nor the vegetables burn, if they do, the Paella will take an awful taste.

We continue cooking with low heat and we should spread all the ingredients around the pan.

When everything is fried, we should add the sweet red pepper and the tomato, mix everything and spread around the pan.

Finally, we add the mixed beans and stir with the rest of the ingredients.

Top Tip: to avoid burning the garlic, we should push all the ingredients to the borders and put the onion in the middle. Move the onion from time to time and add the garlic, move a pair of times, add the tomatoes and mix all the ingredients.

Fourth step: The chicken stock.

When everything is properly fried, is time to add the chicken stock until it starts to boil and the vegetables are cooked.

Top Tip: The rice must cook in water, stock or a mix of both. The good thing about the chicken stock is that provides more taste to the rice and the better the stock is, the better is the final result. The amount of stock you need, varies depending of the amount of rice you are using, approximately for 600 g of rice you need 2 litres of chicken stock.

Fifth Step: The rice.

Once the rice is boiling, we can add the rice. We should be very careful to distribute the rice uniformly inside the pan. After this we don’t stir the rice again so, distribute properly and look if all the rice is completely covered with the chicken stock, if not, add more until it is completely covered.

When all that is completed, wait until it is strongly boiling and then let is cook with low heat.

Sixth Step: Colour the Paella and add the snails.

Right after adding the rice, when we have everything cooking with low heat, is time to give that characteristic colour to the Paella. For that we add the saffron or the colouring and mix with the chicken stoke carefully.

Now we can add the snails and move them until they are completely covered with the chicken stock.

Final Step.

When the water is completely evaporated, the Paella will be almost ready to eat. We should leave it to stand for a few minutes, then we decorate with lemon pieces and… Let’s go eat!