Paella Ingredients

Paella! This famous saffron infused rice dish is a traditional Spanish recipe that comes fully loaded with seafood or anything your heart desires! You don’t need a paella pan to cook paella, any skillet or even a large pot will do, and it’s surprisingly straightforward to make.

If you’ve always wanted to but been too afraid to try Paella, I can assure you – there is no reason to be scared! If you approach it the right way – and I like to keep my recipes as risk free as possible – you will end up withrice that’s cooked

The beauty of paella is that it is in fact extremely flexible. Don’t get too hung up about getting the exact seafood I use. Don’t listen to the authors who tell you that you MUST use homemade fish broth or buy extremely expensive seafood stock.

Easy Spanish Paella Recipe With Seafood [+video]

Cookbook, Paella, whether it be for a quick midweek meal or a large festive gathering, is meant to be relaxed and fun, not stressful withstrict rules.

I say this is a straightforward recipe but I AM going to spend a bit more time on explaining steps and process visuals than I usually do (short recipe video extremely helpful for first timers) because I’m guessing paella is a bit of a special occasion dish for many and I want to ensure you nail it! (And you will, I promise – if you follow my steps!)

Paella rice packets tend to be very helpful providing clues such as pictures of Paella or “perfect for paella!” splashed across it. 🙂

Easy Seafood Paella

Where to find paella rice – here in Australia, paella rice is sold at most Woolworths and Harris Farms, some Coles, delis, Spanish or Mediterranean delis (some Italian ones too), or gourmet stores.

Paella rice is a short grain variety of rice (ie it is short in length, distinctly different frombasmati which is very long). The unique quality of paella rice is that it absorbs more liquid than other types of rice without getting bloated and mushy, making it ideal for a dish like paella where you want the rice to absorb loads of flavour.

) which has similar characteristics ie. ability to absorb lots of liquid, except risotto goes creamy if you stir it. The next best is medium grain rice – the same rice I use for rice pudding.

Quick And Easy Spanish Paella With Shrimp

I do not recommend using: brown rice, long grain white rice, black rice, wild rice or any other fancy type of rice. And in anticipation of someone asking –

But outside of Spain, it’s considered a key ingredient – and it adds a ton of flavour to the dish. 25 million Aussies would throw uptheirhands in protest if I left it out! So it’s in. 🙂

Forgot to include calamari in the above photo! if you don’t find rings, buy a squid tube then slice it – as pictured below.

Seafood Paella (on The Grill)

This part is pretty straightforward. The only key tip here is to only cook the squid/calamari for 90 seconds – squid cooks super fast and goes rubbery quite quickly!

You don’t need a paella pan. Any large skillet will work fine – or even a wide pot.In fact, paella pans require more advanced cooking skills because the everyday paella pans tend to be quite thin which makes the rice veryprone to burning unless you have a stove burner made especially for paella (they have wide rings that turn down pretty low).

Note how we return some of the cooked chorizo back in to cook with the rice. It adds great flavour into the dish as well as salt.

Seafood Paella Recipe

The rice is cooked uncovered –this is a distinct cooking technique for paella compared to other iconic rice dishes of the world like Jambalayaand Biryani. Initially, we cook the rice for just 10 minutes – at this stage, it will be partially cooked though it will seem to absorb most of the liquid.

We add the prawns and mussels partway through cooking the rice because they cook faster. So the idea here is that the prawns, mussels and rice all finish cooking at the same time. If the seafood was added with the rice, they would overcook. Nobody wants rubbery prawns in their paella!

The mussels) leech an astonishing amount of liquid as they cook – around 3/4 of a cup. Not only does this provide the extra liquid required to finish cooking the rice, it’s essentially our very own homemade seafood stock that adds a load of incredible flavour into our paella!

An Easy Version Of The Classic Spanish Dish Seafood Paella

The home stretch! After 8 minutes, the prawns will be perfectly cooked and the mussels will be open so you know they’re cooked.

An inconvenience!😉). And it will still be a bit liquidy which is exactly what you want – because now we’re going to cover and rest it off the heat, during which time the excess liquid will be absorbed, leaving you with a bit pot of juicy paella rice, ready for serving!

It’s entirely up to you whether you take it to the table as it is with the seafood completely covering the rice, or whether you give it a bit of a mix so the seafood gets jumbled through the rice a bit.

Classic Seafood Paella Recipe

I tend to give it a bit of a mix to loosen the rice a bit, mix the flavour through a bit better and also disperse the seafood through. So I bring it to the table looking like this:

Paella is such a great dish for a gathering because it’s easy to make loads in a giant pan or get multiple pans going at the same time!

Allow for 1/3 cup / 60g of rice per person, plus around 150g / 5 oz of proteins and seafood. This is slightly on the generous side – but leftovers keep well, and nobody wants to be short!

Barbecued Seafood Paella Recipe

Back in 2016, in my pre recipe video days, I shared this Paella recipe as part of a 3 course Spanish Fiesta! So here are some suggestions to make a full Spanish Feast:

Note: recipe calls for chopped fresh tomatoes if you have find ripe juicy ones which I could not. Canned crushed tomato is the best substitute which is what I’ve used.

Recipe video above. The most famous Spanish dish of them all! Paella is meant to be a fun relaxed dish, so don't get hung up about having the exact same seafood I've used - see Notes. And don't be scared of making paella - it is actually very forgiving if you have the right liquid/rice ratios and follow the order in which I cook things!

Shrimp And Chorizo Paella Recipe

Note on Chorizo - NOT in traditional Spanish Paella recipes however, it's widely used in Spanish restaurants outside of Spain. Australia would faint if I excluded it. So it's in!

No salt? You'll find if you follow the recipe as is, it is well seasoned from the chorizo, full salt chicken stock (not low salt) and the seafood. When you taste at the end, if you want it saltier, add a sprinkle before you mix it all up for serving.

1. Chorizo - make sure you get cured chorizo (ie already cooked) not raw chorizo (ie like raw sausage, won't slice neatly).

Authentic Spanish Paella Recipe With Seafood

3. Rice - paella is best made with paella rice. Get anything labelled: Bomba, Calasparra, Valencia or de Valencia, or paella rice. Packs often have a photo of paella or great for paella! splashed across it. It will probably have the word Arroz next to it which means rice in Spanish. (Australia - sold at large Woolies, some Coles, all Harris Farms, Spanish / Euro delis, gourmet stores).

Unsure how much liquid to use for your rice? Make this recipe with 3 cups of stock for 1.5 cups rice, that's a safe amount for any type of white rice. Then if the rice is still too firm at the end, just add boiling water or hot stock 1/2 cup at a time and keep cooking. Drizzle all over the pan and just leave it om the stove.

Do not use: brown rice (takes too long to cook, too firm), basmati (too firm) or jasmine rice (too mushy), sticky rice (texture completely wrong for this dish), wild rice (too firm), black rice (too fancy 😂). Do not ask about quinoa (the answer is NO!😂)

Spanish Paella Recipe

If you DO NOT USE seafood, increase the liquid in this recipe to 3 3/4 cups / 925 ml for the 1 1/2 cups rice (because seafood leeches plenty of liquid), and I highly recommend using an excellent chicken stock (or clam juice / gourmet fish stock if you can) plus sautéing 3 chopped up anchovies (or 2 tsp paste) with the onion (it will dissolve, you won't taste anchovies - it will help with flavour loss from no seafood).

4. Tomato - diced fresh tomato is traditional, but if you can't find juicy ones (as I couldn't when I went to film the video) use canned instead.

5. Stock/broth - The better the stock, the better the paella. A homemade fish stock would be best. However, if you use some seafood, it drops juices while it cooks which adds a significant amount of flavour into store bought

Paella For A Crowd Recipe (with Video)