That looks delicious! Man, makes me want to make a paella again. I remember the last one I made the saffron alone indeed cost way more than all the other ingredients combined!
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You can pretty much make a paella with whatever ingredients you have, you just need to watch out for these specific things:
a) The rice: The best rice is the short grained bomba or calasparra. If you can't find it, no worries, just use any regular rice. Just DON'T use pre-cooked or flavored "special for paella" rice. They won't absorb as much water and won't taste as good.
b) The stock: Rice absorbs water in order to cook. If you add flavor to this water, it will be absorbed by the rice. I usually split the chicken wings in three parts and use the tip for this. My stock recipe uses blue crab, chicken stock, shrimp stock, chicken wing tips, garlic, onion, shrimp shells (I've found that if you use shrimp on their shells, while tastier, not everyone goes through the hassle of shelling them once cooked, and it's a shame to waste them). Make your stock as flavorful as you want (some variations use octopus stock, fish stock etc).
c) Temperature control is a MUST. The final hour of cooking the paella requires low, even heat to cook the rice without burning it. Socarrato is really hard to do, I usually don't bother with it, and even though is a delicacy, a lot of people don't like it (too salty for their taste)
d) Saffron adds a lot if you use the correct one. Try to find mancha grade saffron (it's the highest grade, and the best for this). Last I checked, 1gr of Saffron goes for about USD$10. If you use a lot of saffron is best to buy 1 ounce cans and use a scale to just use what you need. I use a cheap american weigh digital scale for this (Fun fact, this is used also by drug dealers! At some point the US gov't tracked sales of this thing). Just remember to let it rest in a cup of boiling water (I use also turmeric roots, they have to be boiled, so I just boil the roots and use a cup of that water for this) in order to extract as much flavor and color as possible.
There are a LOT of variations of paella out there, and I wouldn't really call mine "the best" or "the proper one". A lot of the fun on this dish is to get people together and let them help. It should take about 4 hours at the very least to get it done, so get some drinks and company.
Also, there is a REALLY tasty variation called "paella negra". It uses squid or octopus ink instead of saffron (some recipes call for saffron, but it turns it the paella black-greenish) and is heavily slanted toward seafood. At some point I used to compete with my recipe, and usually the ones that really worried me on taste were the black ones. Sadly, I haven't been able to replicate them as successfully as I remember them, so if anyone knows how to make them, let me know!Comment
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Here is an authentic paella master from Valencia making paella valenciana with wood. He starts speaking in spanish but at the end speaks in valencian. But I think that you don't need to understand to see the work:
He doesn't use stock, he actually make it from veggies and meat in the paella.
Another video from Toni Montoliu, this with english subtitles:
Spoken in valencian language, not spanish.Last edited by rafelo; August 7, 2016, 11:44 AM.Comment
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