Best Seafood Paella

This saffron-infused paella recipe is loaded with mussels, clams, and shrimp. Grill it in your biggest skillet for best flavor (no special pan required). Paella serves a crowd for your next cookout!

Sally is the author of four cookbooks and is a regular correspondent for the Boston Globe Wednesday Food Section. She also is a food photographer.

A festive occasion calls for a big statement, and this paella is just that: a colorful rice dish bursting with clams, mussels and shrimp along with smoky chorizo and saffron for tons of flavor. You don’t need much else to serve alongside it, but you could make a green salad if you feel inspired.

Seafood Paella {paleo, Whole30, Aip}

Set the whole pan of paella on your picnic table, and bring out some crusty bread and wine glasses. Summer is just too short not to celebrate it with friends.

The origins of paella are ancient, rooted in the area around Valencia, Spain near the Albufera Lagoon, where both fishing and rice growing dominated the region for centuries.

Paella was the food of farm workers who cooked dishes of rice over wood fires, embellished with whatever ingredients they could find.

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The dish is named for the wide, shallow pan in which the paella is cooked. The word paella is from a Valencian dialect meaning “pan, ” probably derived from the Latin word patella for pan.

While you can buy a paella pan and even a special outdoor paella grill for cooking it, it's easy enough to adapt the traditional paella method to our home kitchens without a lot of extra fuss.

Since I don’t possess a paella pan, I used the largest sturdy skillet in my collection of pans. A cast iron pan would be ideal but mine was not big enough and I found my heavy skillet worked just fine. Lacking a large skillet, you could also use a medium-size roasting pan (approximately 14x10 inches).

Best Pasta And Seafood “paella” Recipe

Although you can cook paella entirely indoors on top of the stove, when you consider paella’s wood-fired origins, it makes total sense to cook it outside on the grill. For this recipe, I started it on the stove indoors while the grill heated, and then finished it on the grill. Even, steady, medium heat is the goal.

Paella is the mother of all the one-pot meals, so it makes a supreme party dish. Improvisation rules the day, since even in Spain the issue of what ingredients should go in paella is hotly disputed, making it impossible for foreigners, let alone Spaniards, to dictate them strictly.

Paella is essentially a rice dish, and the type of rice does make a difference. Spanish bomba rice, a medium-grained stubby rice that absorbs liquid well but maintains some firmness when it cooks, is preferred.

Best Paella Recipe

The crispy bits! Once the stock comes to a simmer, don’t stir it. As the paella cooks, the rice stays on the bottom and forms a crusty golden bottom layer in the finished dish. This crust of rice is called

For this seafood paella, you can use fish or shellfish stock if you like and if you can find a good source for it, but I actually prefer chicken stock. It adds a depth of flavor, and as the shellfish cook, you get plenty of sweet, briny juices to flavor the rice. Be sure to taste the stock and season it with salt if necessary.

Saffron is a key ingredient, too. These orange-red threads are actually the dried stigmas of crocus flowers. Crumbled into a pot of hot stock, saffron adds an earthy, floral, and somewhat mysterious flavor to your paella. It imbues the rice with a gorgeous golden color, too.

Minute Seafood Paella

Saffron is a fairly expensive spice, but thankfully you only need a few threads to season a whole dish of paella. It also keeps for a fairly long time as long if it's stored in an airtight container and kept out of direct sunlight, so you don't need to worry about using up your extra saffron right away.

. Sofrito lays the groundwork for all the flavors in the dish to mingle; think of it as priming a canvas before making a painting.

I chose shrimp, clams, and mussels for this seafood version of paella, and Spanish dry-cured chorizo for its smoky, meaty flavor. Chorizo can be a controversial add-in and not all Spanish cooks agree that it belongs in paella, so skip it if you like. You can also substitute other cooked sausages and add some smoked paprika to taste to achieve the desired flavor.

Seafood Paella Recipe

If you have trouble finding Spanish chorizo, substitute another kind of cooked sausage along with 1 teaspoon of smoked paprika (for the smoky flavor).

No grill? Cook this inside! Cook the paella through step 6 on top of the stove. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Add the seafood (step 7), cover the pan tightly with foil and finish cooking in the oven for 6 to 10 minutes or until the rice and shrimp are both cooked through and the mussels and clams are open. Check to see if the bottom has browned and, if not, set the pan over medium heat for a minute or two to allow the bottom layer of rice to caramelize.

*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2, 000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.

Easy Seafood Paella Recipe (full Tutorial)

Nutrition information is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate. In cases where multiple ingredient alternatives are given, the first listed is calculated for nutrition. Garnishes and optional ingredients are not included.

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This dish is a mixture of rice, veggies, infused with Saffron, and different spices.Packed with a combination of seafood: shrimps, mussels, calamari, lobster’s tail, fish fillet, and clams

Best Spanish Seafood Paella

Paella is a widely known dish from Spain. It was first cooked by theValencian farmerson the eastern coast of Spain. They would cook medium grain-rice with whatever was available from meat and vegetables. One of the newest or modern versions is the seafood Paella.

The dish paella takes its name from the pan. It is believed that the word “paella” comes from the name of the pan it is made in - the Latin term patella.

No, you don’t. You can use any skillet or even any shallow & wide pan. Keep in mind, that your layer of rice should be no more than 2 or 2 1/2 inches deep. So the rice cooks quickly and evenly.

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So the main ingredient is rice, you can find Paella rice sold in grocery stores but it can be a bit expensive. I found that usingmedium-grainedrice works great.

I like using either vegetable stock or chicken stock for this dish, whatever is available. The stock adds richness and depth to the flavor. Be sure to taste the stock and adjust the season as needed.

If you can get your hands-on fish or seafood stock that would be even better, but I found that vegetable or chicken stock works perfectly.

Chicken & Seafood Paella

Saffron is an expensive spice, but luckily, we only need a few threads. Try to get a good quality one, don’t worry a small box will last you a long time. Just keep it in an airtight container and away from direct sun.

It is the base of your dish. The combination of onion, garlic, tomato and peppers all sautéed in olive oil. I like to add to those celery and leeks they really richens the flavor more.

You can add any seafood you like. You can use more than 2 or even just one. We are big on seafood that’s why I added different kinds of seafood.

Mixed Paella Recipe

Tip: try adding 3 or 4 shrimps 🦐 heads-on if available, I noticed that it makes a big difference in the richness of the flavor.

This is hands down, the easiest, quickest and tastiest “Spanish Seafood Paella Recipe”. Let’s talk about how gorgeous this dish is, look at it! It is a statement itself!

This dish is a mixture of rice, veggies, infused with Saffron, and different spices. Packed with a combination of seafood: shrimps, mussels, calamari, lobster’s tail, fish fillet, and clams.

Seafood Paella, For Everyone

Serving: 1 g | Calories: 449 kcal | Carbohydrates: 71 g | Protein: 20 g | Fat: 9 g | Saturated Fat: 1 g | Cholesterol: 111 mg | Sodium: 935 mg | Potassium: 415 mg | Fiber: 3 g |