Quick & Easy Paella - Oven Baked Sausage & Shrimp Paella Recipe

Hello this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with paella. That's right I'm going to show you a quick and easy method for making a delicious sausage and shrimp paella, or as my friend Gordon Ramsay might call it, paella. Although actually he would say it more like paella. But anyway the point is some people pronounce the ll and speaking of ll, ladies love paella, as does almost everybody else. And this is my quick and easy take on this iconic Spanish dish. So last things first, eventually you're going to need two cups of hot stock. You can absolutely just heat up some chicken broth, but if you want it to be extra special we're going to take the shells we reserve from our shrimp and we're going to throw those in a saucepan with a little bit of olive oil. And we're going to put that on medium heat and we're going to saute that until those shells turn a nice pinky orange color and they start to smell like awesome grilled shrimp. And when it gets to that point we are ready to add a big pinch of saffron. And what is saffron? That is saffron. And believe it or not those are the reproductive organs from a crocus plant. That's right, this is the world's kinkiest spice. And there's only like three of those little threads per plant, so it takes a tremendous amount of plants to make a little bit of saffron, which is why it's so crazy expensive. And a little bit goes a long way, we're only going to throw in about a half a teaspoon. We're going to give that a quick mix with a spoon. And this is going to give your paella such a unique color and flavor and aroma, which by the way is almost impossible to describe but I will try on the blog post. And then we're going to add two and a quarter cups of chicken broth. And mine was already fully seasoned. If yours isn't, make it so. All right, give that a stir. We're going to bring that up to simmer and we're going to let that simmer for 20 minutes, just on low. And like I said we're going to need two cups of hot broth to make our paella with, so that extra quarter cup of stock just accounts for evaporation. And then after simmering for 20 minutes all we have to do is strain and reserve. And like I said you can just heat up some plain chicken stock and use that, but I highly highly suggest you do it with the shrimp and the saffron. It really will make a tremendous difference. And as that broth simmers it's going to extract that beautiful color from the saffron and it's going to look kind of rusty brown at this stage. But when it gets absorbed into that rice it's going to turn it into this gorgeous pale yellow color. And by the way the stock should be hot when it goes in, so if you are going to make that part ahead you want to make sure you heat it up before proceeding with the recipe. Okay, so our saffron broth has been taken care of and it's on to building the rest of the paella. So we're going to place a large shallow heavy bottom skillet on medium heat. Make sure you're using something that can go in the oven. We're going to throw in some olive oil, to which we're going to add a big handful of sliced sausage. I usually use chorizo, this time I'm using linguisa. I've used andouille before. I've actually used hot italian sausage before. You can even use saucisson. Okay, I've never actually tried that but I just felt like saying saucisson. And we're going to cook that sausage for about two minutes on each side. And once our sausage looks like that we're going to go ahead and throw in some diced onion. And we'll cook that on medium for a few minutes until it kind of gets translucent. You know the drill. Now at this point you can turn the heat down to medium low. And we're going to go ahead and toss in our garlic. Give that about a one minute stir. And then it's time for one of the stars of the show, the rice. And what we're going to use is the same rice we use for risotto, which is called arborio rice. And while it's not exactly like what they use in Spain, it is closer than long grain rice for sure. All right in Spain they use something called bomba rice. So if you can get bomba, use bomba. But if you can't get bomba, use this. And we're going to stir that around until every grain of rice has been coated with that amazing oil. So give it a thorough mixing. And when all that rice is coated we're going to go ahead and throw in some peas. That'll provide some nice color and sweetness. And this would be the point if you wanted to add some extra spices. You could add some regular or smoked paprika. Now I didn't because I had plenty of that flavor from the rendered sausage fat. But you'll need to play that by ear and decide yourself. And we'll review that on the blog post. And when all that's mixed in go ahead and take your spatula and kind of even everything out. Tamp it down a little bit with the back of the spatula. Make sure you have even sausage distribution. And at that point we're ready to cover with the shrimp. So I have a pound of jumbo shrimp. You saw the shells earlier. Of course those have been de-veined. Who the heck wants to eat veined shrimp? Not me. And we're going to place those in a single layer over the top. And what happens is you'll start doing a design and then by the end you'll give up and just start putting them wherever you have an open spot. All right so that's just how it's going to work. And then last but not least I had a sweet red bell pepper that I sliced thinly. And we're going to lay those strips in between the shrimp. We'll also go around the outside. Around the outside. Around the outside. Which will look pretty cool. And then at this point even though our stock is seasoned I am going to sprinkle a little bit of salt and cayenne over the top of the shrimp. It just feels right. And by the way as you're doing this make sure your oven has been preheated to 425. It is critical that the oven's ready when this is ready. And then I want you to crank your heat too high. And when you hear it sizzling. It's kind of hard to hear with the fan but you can hear it. When you hear it sizzling you're going to go ahead and pour in that hot saffron broth. And you really should hear some serious sizzling when you pour that in. And then all you need to do is turn off the heat. Give it the old shake-a-shake-a. Carefully. And then place that in the center of a 425 degree oven for exactly 20 minutes. And when you pull it out it should look something like this. And at this point you may be done. Everything could be perfect although it probably will not be. The rice is probably only going to be like 90 percent cooked. It'll almost be tender but not quite. And it should just appear a hair wet. So it will probably look something like that. So the last step is you turning the heat to medium high and simply cooking that until the rice is perfect. Now because we use very specific amounts of broth there really shouldn't be a big danger in this getting all soft and mushy and overcooked. So you're going to turn on that heat and the rest of that liquid is going to boil up from the bottom. Steam the rest of the rice. And in my case about three minutes the rice was perfect. It should just be barely tender. It should definitely have some firmness to it. The grains should be separate but a little sticky. And you can see that gorgeous light yellow color the saffron gives. Just a beautiful looking dish. So whenever you decide your rice is perfect you're going to go ahead and turn off the heat. And then we're going to finish with just a little drizzle of olive oil and a generous sprinkling of freshly chopped parsley. And that's it. Quick and easy paella. And let me be perfectly clear this is a very very simple stripped down version. Traditional paella generally is going to have way more ingredients in it. It's also cooked all the way on top of the flame not in the oven which ideally results in some nice crusty rice on the bottom of the pan and around the edges. And while I will do a classic version in the future basically the mission here was to make it possible for someone that's never made this before to be a total paella playa. So despite this being sort of a training wheels version it still came out fantastic and incredibly delicious. I mean you can't go wrong with spicy smoky sausage. We've already talked about that gorgeous saffron scented and colored rice. And you would think those shrimp would be overcooked but you'd be wrong. And in fact roasting them on top of the rice like that they've actually dried out just a hair which actually makes them sweeter. All right so I really do hope you give this a try. Head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual. And as always enjoy!