What paella and correct nutrition management have in common

One fun part at the Distributors’ Conference 2022 in Mallorca was the paella cooking contest on Tuesday night. Seven teams competed; three groups had even won extra ingredients beforehand, so they could have made an extra fine Paella—in theory!

But with cooking, as with nutrition, you must have the practical and theoretical knowledge about the ingredients to process them at the right time and in the right way. We promised to give you an authentic recipe, so here it is:

Paella—the true philosophy from making it to sharing it

“Come on, it’s just rice and some other ingredients, it can’t be so difficult,” some thought. But, oh, how wrong we were! Yes, it’s a rice dish, but not at all like risotto, for example. The creamy, slushy Italian recipe has nothing to do with paella except for the rice.

“No onions? No garlic?? No white wine??? Are you kidding me????” Nope, since none of that goes into the true paella valenciana! And nor does seafood, by the way

The crucial crunch

Instead, a real Paella has socarrat or socarraet: It must literally be scraped out of the pan in earnest and, totally unlike the highly viscose, not to say lascivious melting Risotto, it rolls onto your palate with an exciting crunchiness.

Paella should ideally be cooked over a wood fire. This isn’t obligatory, but… you get the idea! For a real paella, you invite friends over, discuss at length with them what to eat beforehand, finally decide on a paella, make the actual appointment for the cookery event on an afternoon and start cooking.

In between, you panic and call your mum to double check your recipe. This part does seem to be obligatory (unless you happen to be the mum yourself); at least that’s what I learned from interviewing two passionate paella cooks from the region who have long-term experience with the dish.

And long-term practice is needed, so you may want to keep trying this a couple of times to get it right.

The authentic recipe needs

500 gram rabbit meat in small pieces
500 gram chicken meat in small pieces
60 ml extra virgin olive oil
1 ripe tomato, peeled and grated
200 gram green beans
200 gram lima beans
500 gram paella rice (short grain rice; paella
beginners can look for arroz bomba)
1.5 litres chicken broth or vegetable broth, which is best prepared in
advance from fresh ingredients instead of instant powder, of course.
You will need double the amount of broth as rice.
Example: For a paella for 6 people, calculate 6 x 75 g of rice =
450 g, so you’ll need 900–1,000 g of broth, meaning 0.9–1 litre.
A sprig of fresh rosemary
1–2 tablespoons of saffron threads
Salt

For more paella-passionate experience: in a different style, you can also add the rice, and later the broth and salt

Heat the paella, pour the oil in, and then fry the meat over a medium heat until it’s tender and golden. Then add the tomato and the vegetables, and fry everything well.

Finally, add the broth.

When everything starts to boil, add the rice and some salt.

The rosemary and the saffron must only be added in the last 5 minutes

Otherwise, you’ll get too much rosemary flavour.

There must be full heat now. After approximately 10 minutes, reduce the heat and cook for another ten minutes until all the liquid has evaporated and the rice forms the crunchy socarraet. Take it off the heat and start enjoying it!

Of course, you are free to create your own interpretation of a paella and match it to your taste, but it will not be the original valenciana one. It
does not have to be, either.

The winning team of the paella contest at the Distributor Conference 2022 won with an Egyptian German Guatemaltecan Honduranian Malaysian interpretation of the iconic dish!

Three Insider Tips from the Paella-Passionate Xavi Moreno

Knowing the paella contest would come, some of us took the opportunity to get insightful knowledge from our colleagues at La Marmota Insomne, all four of them connoisseurs:

Question: Can the lima beans be replaced if I can’t buy them in my country?

Answer: Not in an authentic paella valenciana. But a Paella from Alicante or from Castellón would have green peas

Question: Is it OK to use instant broth?

Answer: The vegetable and chicken broth are much tastier, and it is better to make it in advance with water and real ingredients. It is also crucial for the crunch to get the amounts of liquid versus rice right, so the rice is dry and crunchy at the end. The trick is: two parts water and one part rice.

Question: How do you get the delicious crunchy socarraet consistency? Should the paella be left to sit for a few minutes when it comes off the heat?

Answer: Normally that’s not necessary. It is enough with those 10 minutes and last 5 minutes at full heat. But in fact, I would say in the previous steps that it will pan out better if you add the rice and control the temperature like this: 5 minutes of maximum heat when the rice goes in, then 10 minutes of medium heat, and then 5 minutes at full heat again to get the socarraet.

Finally, the most important thing is to get the rice just to the perfect boiling point; it’s similar in meaning to Italian pasta that has to be cooked al dente.

For beginners in the art of paella cooking, a special kind of rice is available in Spain. It’s called arroz bomba, and it has the magic power of not getting soft if you need five extra minutes for the broth to boil off and the rice to be dry.

Another trick if you come across a problem of too much moisture in the end is to switch off the heat and cover the paella with newspaper sheets until the broth evaporates.