Grilled Paella Recipe

This recipes uses traditional ingredients including chorizo, chicken, shrimp, squid, clams and mussels. If you prefer a vegetarian version, you can find one here.

Step 2: Set up your grill for direct grilling and build a 3-zone fire. In the best of all possible worlds, you’d build and work over a campfire. Alternatively, you’d work on a large charcoal grill (like a Weber Ranch) or gas grill. If working on a charcoal grill, toss a log or some wood chunks on the fire to generate smoke. If working on a gas grill, place the wood chips in the smoker box or in a smoker pouch.

Step 3: Place the paella pan over the hottest part of your fire. Add the olive oil and a piece of onion and heat until the onion sizzles boisterously in the oil. Add the remaining onion, the bell pepper, and chorizo and cook over high heat, stirring with a long-handled implement, like a grill hoe, until the onions begin to brown, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic, parsley, and tomato halfway through (after 2 minutes). If the mixture starts to burn, slide the pan to a cooler part of the grill.

Grilled Paella With Shrimp, Mussels & Clams Recipe

Step 4: Stir in the rice and sauté until the grains look shiny, 1 minute. Stir in the soaked saffron and wine and boil for 1 minute. Stir in 4 cups stock and adjust the heat (by moving the paella pan closer or further away from hot part of the fire) to obtain a gentle simmer. Gently simmer the rice until soft, about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the 5th cup of stock if needed, and add salt and pepper to taste. While you’re at it, season the chicken pieces, shrimp, and squid with salt and pepper.

Step 5: Meanwhile, on another part of the fire (if working on a campfire, position your Tuscan grill over the embers), grill the chicken pieces, starting skin side down. This will take 6 to 8 minutes per side, working over a medium-high heat. Once the chicken pieces are crusty, brown, and cooked through, add them to the paella. After about 12 minutes, place the clams and mussels on the grate and grill until the shells pop open. Transfer the bivalves to the paella with tongs, taking care not to spill the juices. Brush and oil the grate and place the shrimp and squid on the grate. Grill until firm and white, 1 to 2 minutes per side. Add the shrimp and squid to the paella. In the event you have been obsessive enough to skewer the peas, place on the grill and grill until lightly browned and cooked through, 1 to 2 minutes per side. Unskewer the peas over the paella.

Step 6: Taste the paella for seasoning, adding salt and pepper as needed. If you’ve done this right and the stars are in alignment, the rice will be tender just as all the stock is absorbed and the proteins are cooked. You may need to add more stock or you may need to cook the rice a little longer to absorb any excess stock. Don’t worry—your paella will only improve in the process. Serve at once, with a crisp dry Spanish wine, like an Albarino or Txakoli. Get ready for the best paella on Planet Barbecue.Daniel joined the Serious Eats culinary team in 2014 and writes recipes, equipment reviews, articles on cooking techniques. Prior to that he was a food editor at Food & Wine magazine, and the staff writer for Time Out New York's restaurant and bars section.

Arroz Con Bogavante (grilled Rice With Lobster)

Just a little longer, I want to get a really good socarrat for the photos. I said those words a little too confidently, and repeated them a few too many times, as my test batches of paella finished cooking over smoldering coals on an outdoor grill. I was aiming for that famed copper-colored crust of rice on the bottom of the broad paella pan, and I was sure I could nail it. Except I didn't. I burned it. And then I burned it again.

There are many things to know about paella, but one of the most important is this: Don't burn your paella in search of the ultimate socarrat. The socarrat is something you learn to do over time, as you master your own setup—the charcoal or wood you're using, the grill you're working on, the specific paella recipe you're making. It's not something you can casually pull off just because you think you know your way around a live fire. (That's a side-eye at myself, in case it's not clear.)

A few weeks later I was standing by the paella makers atMercado Little Spain, the New York City food court that is chef José Andrés's paean to Spanish gastronomy. They're not just making paella at Mercado Little Spain, they're doing it as close to a traditional al fresco Valencian paella feast as could ever be possible in New York. Despite being in an indoor concourse on the lower level of the new Hudson Yards development, Andrés's team is cooking huge pans of paella over roaring wood fires, all of it set up in a large rectangular fireproof box that looks vaguely like a shuffleboard court, if shuffleboard involved pushing around flaming strips of kindling instead of a bunch of plastic disks.

Grilled Seafood Paella

The setup is important because it allows them to do things I couldn't do as easily on the kettle grill—namely, constantly manage the fire throughout the cooking process. In their traditional setup, the pans are positioned on large iron stands, and the fire is built beneath them. The cooks use thin strips of firewood, which light quickly and burn fast.

In a matter of minutes, they can make a fire so energetic the flames shoot up above the pans, then reduce it to smoldering embers just moments later. Using a spade, they can push those embers out from under the pan to prevent the rice from burning as the paella finishes cooking, then sweep them back under for the last 30 seconds of cooking for one final boost of heat and, hopefully, a good socarrat.

Using a kettle grill makes managing the fire harder, since you can't tinker with it once the paella pan is set down on the grill grate. Any adjustments to the fire would require lifting the paella pan and removing the grate, then putting it all back before continuing. It's not something you want to do with a wide, shallow pan full of boiling liquid and rice. This means you're more likely to choose charcoal as your fuel, which burns longer and requires less intervention, but also doesn't die down as quickly the way you'd ideally want.

Seafood Paella Recipe From Pitmaster Marcio

The more sustained heat of charcoal, in turn, needs to be managed in other ways. If your charcoal is still too hot as the rice absorbs the last of the liquid, you have to reduce the heat before anything scorches. Since you can't push the coals out from under the pan, you need to lift the pan higher, moving it farther from the heat source. Wadded-up tinfoil works for a short lift, while bricks work to gain even more height.

It takes some practice to figure out how to get the heat management right, and even a pro like me can mess it up by trying to push the paella too aggressively towards a crunchy brown crust on the bottom. Even the experienced cooks at Mercado Little Spain, who've been cooking paellas up the wazoo every day since the market opened several months ago, say they don't nail it every single time—and they've got their method so dialed in they can set a 17-minute timer when the liquid starts boiling and take a perfectly done paella off the coals the instant the buzzer sounds.

But maybe we need to back up. Why are we cooking paella over a grill or live fire in the first place, aside from the fact that it's traditional?

Seafood Paella (on The Grill)

Because of how wide a large paella pan is, there's really no way to make paella for a crowd other than over a live fire or on a grill. A stovetop burner is too small for a large paella pan, and would create hot and cold spots that would lead to uneven cooking, with soupy rice in some areas and overcooked sections in others. You can use the stovetop for smaller paella pans—around a foot or so in diameter—but not the large ones meant for a feast. And that's really when paella is most fun anyway.

A live fire or bed of charcoals gives us the broad, even expanse of heat that will ensure every inch of the paella pan is being heated sufficiently. If you have a grill or other setup that allows side-access to the fire the way the traditional iron stands do, you can more easily emulate that classic paella cooking method, with a wood fire that you manage continuously. If you have a kettle grill, which is how I tested my recipes, you have to do what I suggested above—use charcoal and

The setup is important because it allows them to do things I couldn't do as easily on the kettle grill—namely, constantly manage the fire throughout the cooking process. In their traditional setup, the pans are positioned on large iron stands, and the fire is built beneath them. The cooks use thin strips of firewood, which light quickly and burn fast.

In a matter of minutes, they can make a fire so energetic the flames shoot up above the pans, then reduce it to smoldering embers just moments later. Using a spade, they can push those embers out from under the pan to prevent the rice from burning as the paella finishes cooking, then sweep them back under for the last 30 seconds of cooking for one final boost of heat and, hopefully, a good socarrat.

Using a kettle grill makes managing the fire harder, since you can't tinker with it once the paella pan is set down on the grill grate. Any adjustments to the fire would require lifting the paella pan and removing the grate, then putting it all back before continuing. It's not something you want to do with a wide, shallow pan full of boiling liquid and rice. This means you're more likely to choose charcoal as your fuel, which burns longer and requires less intervention, but also doesn't die down as quickly the way you'd ideally want.

Seafood Paella Recipe From Pitmaster Marcio

The more sustained heat of charcoal, in turn, needs to be managed in other ways. If your charcoal is still too hot as the rice absorbs the last of the liquid, you have to reduce the heat before anything scorches. Since you can't push the coals out from under the pan, you need to lift the pan higher, moving it farther from the heat source. Wadded-up tinfoil works for a short lift, while bricks work to gain even more height.

It takes some practice to figure out how to get the heat management right, and even a pro like me can mess it up by trying to push the paella too aggressively towards a crunchy brown crust on the bottom. Even the experienced cooks at Mercado Little Spain, who've been cooking paellas up the wazoo every day since the market opened several months ago, say they don't nail it every single time—and they've got their method so dialed in they can set a 17-minute timer when the liquid starts boiling and take a perfectly done paella off the coals the instant the buzzer sounds.

But maybe we need to back up. Why are we cooking paella over a grill or live fire in the first place, aside from the fact that it's traditional?

Seafood Paella (on The Grill)

Because of how wide a large paella pan is, there's really no way to make paella for a crowd other than over a live fire or on a grill. A stovetop burner is too small for a large paella pan, and would create hot and cold spots that would lead to uneven cooking, with soupy rice in some areas and overcooked sections in others. You can use the stovetop for smaller paella pans—around a foot or so in diameter—but not the large ones meant for a feast. And that's really when paella is most fun anyway.

A live fire or bed of charcoals gives us the broad, even expanse of heat that will ensure every inch of the paella pan is being heated sufficiently. If you have a grill or other setup that allows side-access to the fire the way the traditional iron stands do, you can more easily emulate that classic paella cooking method, with a wood fire that you manage continuously. If you have a kettle grill, which is how I tested my recipes, you have to do what I suggested above—use charcoal and