Paella valenciana

Ingredients

• Bomba rice, or another short grain320 g
• Chicken, in pieces400 g
• Rabbit, in pieces — chicken will do instead300 g
• Flat green beans200 g
• Large white beans — cooked100 g
• Tomato — grated1
• Olive oil60 ml
• Sweet paprika1 tsp
• Saffron1 pinch
• Rosemary1 sprig
• Chicken stock or water900 ml
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Heat the oil in a wide pan and brown the chicken and rabbit on every side. This is not a five-minute job: it takes a good quarter of an hour, and there is no point rushing it — the flavour of the whole dish is laid down here.

   15 min

2. 2

   Push the meat to the edges, put the green beans in the middle and fry them for a couple of minutes. Add the grated tomato and the paprika and cook until the tomato darkens and stops smelling raw.

   6 min

3. 3

   Pour in the stock, add the rosemary, saffron and white beans, salt it noticeably harder than feels right and let it boil for ten minutes. This is the last moment you can correct the seasoning.

   10 min

4. 4

   Scatter the rice in an even layer and level it once with a spoon. After that do not touch the pan again — no stirring, no smoothing.

5. 5

   Cook on a high flame for ten minutes, then drop to medium for another eight, until the stock is gone. The rice should be showing above the surface.

   18 min

6. 6

   Turn the heat up for half a minute and listen: the moment the sound turns from bubbling to a dry crackle, take it off. That is the socarrat. Cover with a cloth and let it stand for five minutes.

   6 min

About the dish

Real Valencian paella is not a seafood dish. Seafood paella exists, but it is a different recipe: the original was cooked inland with what the fields gave — chicken, rabbit and two local beans.

What separates it from risotto is technique, not rice. Risotto is stirred to release starch; paella is not touched at all. That stillness is what produces the socarrat, the thin toasted crust on the bottom that Valencians consider the best part.

The pan needs to be wider than seems necessary. The rice should sit no more than two centimetres deep: in a deep pot it boils rather than evaporates, and you end up with a pilaf.

Worth knowing

• — Rice to liquid runs about one to 2.8 by volume, but it depends on how wide the pan is: the wider it is, the more evaporates.
• — Grind the saffron in a mortar and steep it in a couple of spoons of hot stock, or it stays as threads and gives up no colour.
• — A paella never needs a lid at any stage. The moisture is supposed to leave — that is the entire point of the wide pan.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

620 kcal

Protein

38 g

Fat

24 g

Carbs

62 g

More from Spain

• Spanish tortilla — A thick omelette of potato and onion, where the potato is not fried but poached in oil until it is nearly a purée.