How To Make Spanish Paella | Omar Allibhoy

Hola FoodTubers, I'm Omar Aliboy, I'm a chef and I've been cooking Spanish food since I was a little boy. Today I'm going to be cooking the world famous Spanish national, paella valenciana. If there is a dish in Spain that brings family together, it will be paella. I'm putting my reputation on the line because Valencianos are very particular with this recipe, like Napolitanos are with their pizza. So I have quite a lot of ingredients here, artichokes, green beans, broad beans as you can see, chicken and rabbit, the two main meats. The real heroes of this dish, the saffron. This is just fundamental to the recipe essentially. So let's start. I'm just heating up this beautiful paella pan and I'm going to start preparing the saffron. Spanish saffron is the most expensive in the world, the crop is very small and it's difficult and hard to find outside of Spain. What makes it different is that it is toasted as opposed to sun dried. We are going to use this from another country and toast it ourselves. I'm just going to fold it in kind of an envelope and I'm going to put it into this hot pan just for a few seconds. That will give extra fragrance and it will be easier to release all that beautiful aroma and smokiness into the stock. I've had it for about 10 seconds on each side, that is enough. I have the chicken and the rabbit and first thing, a generous amount of salt. There is a lot of ingredients going into that pan. Good olive oil, extra virgin always. You see how it's crackling, the salt. The pan is really hot and we are going to go with the meat. Have a couple of chicken thighs with the bone and the skin, cut in half. And sort of like a quarter of a rabbit approximately. But again, if you cannot get rabbit and you don't like it, just put more chicken or some pork rib, that will do. We need to cook this meat until it's really dark. This high heat has given the meat a really nice brown caramelised colour and flavour. I'm just going to make a little bit of space for the veggies. I have some runner beans already prepared and some broad beans and I want this to get really brown again. At this point I need to add the artichoke, a very fundamental ingredient in the paella. Take the outer leaves from the bottom of the flower, going to cut the stalk, peel this stalk. You can do it either with a paring knife or with a peeler. Cut the artichoke around here, peel it with a paring knife on the outer part and leave sort of like a diamond shape, like a mushroom. Cut it in half, cut it in quarter and this inner hair which is inside, which is not edible. We just need to remove it. I'm just going to do the same with all these quarters. I'm going to add a couple of artichokes in total so that it all browns nicely. This is not a recipe that needs a lot of stirring actually, otherwise juices will be released and it will start poaching and boiling. That's not what we are looking for. I'm going to go with the next ingredient, garlic. Very important in Spanish cuisine. I'm just going to finely chop it. A couple of garlic cloves for this recipe will be sufficient. I've put the heat down, give it a little stir and I'm not going to leave it there for too long. Maybe just about a minute or 30 seconds even, depending on the heat. Pimentón, smoked paprika as the world knows it. That's what gives fantastic flavour to a lot of Spanish recipes. Give it a little stir and I'm going to add straight away the grated tomatoes. I have two grated tomatoes over here and I think I'm only going to use half. Put the heat right back up and now it's time for stirring. As well, this tomato will cook in about two minutes, no more. Take a look at this. Really nicely browned, loads of colour, loads of depth. Even the veggies, they are no longer green. This is not an al dente, good looking type of thing. All those reds, all those browns means flavour. I have a stock here. I'm just going to pour this chicken stock, one and a half litres. Give it a little stir. Let's go back to the saffron. I'm going to use about half a gram. Crush it a bit so that it spreads out a little bit more. Let's bring this to the boil and add the rice. Now with the rice, I'm going to be using about 250 grams, which is half of this package. But if you don't find Spanish rice or something that is called paella rice, just use short grain rice. Never use basmati or jasmine or long grain in general. It's one of the rice which absorbs most water. Take a quick look. Look at the colour. I'm just going to add about 250 grams of this rice. Give it a little stir. Make sure it spreads quite nicely. Just leave it for a couple of minutes so that the rice flattens and evens and then we'll just let it be. Okay, this is getting back up to the boil. Last stir and we'll let it cook on the highest heat for 10 minutes. Then we will lower it down for another 6 minutes approximately until it's ready. You can see here that this part, the water is below the rice and that one is just over there. It's very important that you don't stir your paella at any point after the beginning because otherwise the rice will release the starch and it will become starchy. We are going to add the rosemary, three sprigs. We are going to create a little bit of a lid. I'm going to lower down the heat because this rice will still need about 5 minutes on a low heat and another 5 minutes resting. I think that will be the perfect rice with the perfect socarrat underneath which is the crispy bit that forms through all that oils and fats that goes down and a bit of the starch of the rice and how it crisps up at the bottom. That's the most tasty part. It's been resting for about 4-5 minutes so now is the time to unveil it. It smells beautiful. The rice looks like it's perfectly cooked. You can see a bit of the burnt bits on the sides. That's exactly what I was looking for, I have to say. And the socarrat on the bottom. Normally you just take the rosemary off, put it into one side and you serve a mix of the top, the bottom, the side, the centre just so that everyone gets a bit of this part. A nice piece of meat, a little bit of the rice mixed with the socarrat always scraping the bottom. In many families they like it with a wedge of lemon. They will put it on the side and you squeeze it yourself. So we'll never squeeze it all over. It's amazing how tasty this rice dish can be. Every aroma, every fragrance of spices, vegetables, I mean it's all in. And there you go, paella, Spanish national dish. If you want me to make any other Spanish recipe please say it on the comment box below and I'll do my best. If you're looking for a great drink to go with this paella go into Drinks Tube and there is a fantastic daiquiri. This recipe and loads more classic Spanish dishes are in my book Tapas Revolution.