What makes bomba rice essential is its ability to absorb large amounts of stock - three times its volume in liquid. The key is obtaining bomba rice, a variety of short-grain rice cultivated in Valencia. If you make paella with standard medium-grain white rice or Thai jasmine rice, your paella will taste off and not as it should. Not just any white rice will work, though. “Buy the best Spanish paella rice you can get your hands on it will make a huge difference, even if you have to order it online,” said Molina. Pizza Hut brought back an iconic item for March Madness - but you can’t eat it Throw out the rule book and just cook," he says.The 8 best protein shakes that are ready-to-goĬelebrity chef Zac Young gave The Manual his Guinness Green Velvet Cake recipe, just in time for St. You can use chicken, seafood, vegies, squid ink or whatever you like because it's meant to be a home-cooked dish. ![]() If you don't have a home-made stock, use a good-quality bought stock. And while Maestre's first choice is for a quality home-made stock, he'd rather see people cook the dish than worry about whether they've slaved over a stock made from scratch. If the sofrito is the heart of the paella, the stock is what makes the dish sing. That extra five minutes will make all the difference to the paella as the flavours will settle and it will taste fantastic." Cook it on high for two minutes and then turn off the heat and rest it for five minutes. So how do you achieve soccarrada success? "After 15 minutes, when all the stock is gone and you finish cooking your paella turn the heat up and look at the bottom of the pan and see if the rice is sticking. In every home in Spain, the kids always fight for the soccarrada and the oldest brother always gets the most," he says. ![]() "Colour means flavour and the soccarrada caramelises the flavours from the garlic and the paprika and that strong flavour is going to give you extra layers of flavour. The Spanish say that the rice should be only as thick as the width of one finger and spread in an even layer," he says. "The height is the most important element about the pan as the rice must have maximum contact with the bottom of the pan to achieve the soccarrada. The classic paella pan made of carbon steel requires a little more care to prevent it from oxidising but is popular with professional paella cooks as it develops a patina over time that Maestre says imparts a certain flavour to the dish. If you have a lot of guests and a large pan, he suggests using more than one burner and rotating the pan in order to control the distribution of heat. It's possible to make do with a flat frying pan as the most important thing is that it will fit over your stove top so the rice has maximum contact with the bottom of the pan. If there is no conduction of heat, there is no evaporation, which means the rice will not cook evenly," he says. ![]() "Having a flat, wide pan with a thin base is very important. The size of the pan will depend on the number of people you want to serve and must take into consideration the size of your oven or cooktop. Maestre's personal preference for a paella pan is one made of stainless steel, round, a flat, dimpled base. If you are going to improvise, opt for a flat wide pan, he says. Sure you can put it in the stock and all that rubbish but you can also stop thinking about being a genius and just add it to the pan and cook it," he says.ĭespite being named after the dish it is cooked in, Maestre argues it's not essential to use a proper paella pan if not having one deters you from cooking the dish. "People muck about with saffron too much. While Maestre concedes many people insist on adding the saffron strands to the warm stock to infuse, he insists it's perfectly acceptable to add the fragrant strands to the sofrito and then add it direct to the pan. For example, I recommend putting all the ingredients for the sofrito in a food processor - the tomatoes, piquillo peppers, garlic, parsley, chives, oil, saffron and paprika - to make it less fiddly to prepare." "I want to make it easy for people to achieve. ![]() "I want people to make paella, so my version of the recipe is about keeping it simple while maintaining that authentic taste," he says.
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