Over the last few years, my husband and I have moved too many times. Since 2014, we have lived in five different apartments/houses. Somehow in one of those many moves, I lost (or threw out) my paella pan. Sigh.
Paella is a favorite of mine. I love the combination of crispy rice, seafood, and spice. So when I saw this Epicurious recipe for a sheet pan version, I knew I had to try it.
I didn’t exactly stick to the original recipe, given what I could find in my post-snow supermarket. But one of the best parts about paella is you can basically throw in whatever you may have on hand to make the recipe yours! So here’s my adapted version – Sheet Pan Paella!
Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup rice
1 3/4 cups chicken broth
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
3/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/8 teaspoon saffron, crushed
1 1/2 teaspoons salt, divided
2 links of Spanish chorizo (about 6 oz)
1 shallot, thinly sliced
6 ounces medium shrimp, peeled, deviened, tails left intact
~2 dozen clams, scrubbed
1 (14 oz can) fire roasted diced tomatoes, drained
I absolutely love paella: rice, saffron, seafood… what isn’t to like? If I could, I’d eat this amazing dish once a week. Traditional paella takes a good hour at least to make, so it would be quite the task to make it all the time. However, I found a paella-like dish from Cooking Light that can be made in 30 minutes! My parents and sister recently went to Spain and brought me back some amazing, but vague, spices. One was just labeled as “paella spice” and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to try it out.
Ingredients:
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 a white onion, chopped
2 chicken sausages, cut into pieces
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 pound large shrimp
2 cups uncooked rice
1 cup water
1 tablespoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon “paella spice” (sub in 1/2 teaspoon crushed saffron for this)
1/4 teaspoon paprika, smoked would be ideal
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup frozen green peas
the juice of 1/2 a lemon juice
Using a Dutch oven or a heavy bottomed pan, head the olive oil over medium-high heat. Chop your onion and sausage.
Add to the pot and cook, stirring, for three minutes.
Add the minced garlic and cook, stirring, for about 30 seconds. Add the shrimp and stir in to the other ingredients.
Add the rice, water, oregano, salt, paella spice (or saffron), paprika, black pepper, and chicken broth.
Mix so that the rice is coated in the liquid.
Bring to a boil and cover. Reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
Remove from heat, stir in the peas, and squeeze with the juice of 1/2 a lemon.
So, traditional paella has that nice crispy bottom where the rice has started to stick to the pan. Twenty minutes obviously won’t give you that result. But the rice turns out fluffy and has the flavoring of not only the saffron/paella spice, but also the smokiness of the chicken sausage and a subtle fresh seafood flavor of the shrimp.
The little bit of citrus really enhances the dish. It brings out all of the flavors and adds such brightness to the rice.
I am so impressed and pleased with how this turned out. For just thirty minutes of your time, you can have a paella-type dinner prepared!
I kept the tails and shell on the shrimp so that they could soak in the liquid while cooking the rice. It helped so that the shrimp wouldn’t overcook. Also, I think it makes the paella look a bit more authentic. 🙂
If you are a bit squeamish about it, feel free to use deveined shrimp. I’d suggest not adding them to the pot until the rice is about half way cooked, so as to not overcook the shrimp.
I wish I could figure out what exactly was in the “paella spice” I had because the flavor was really amazing. Saffron, tumeric, spanish paprika? Sigh. Who knows. But if you come across any pre-made paella mix, be sure to buy it and try this dish! However, I do think that using saffron would make a really solid substitute.
I wanted to challenge myself this weekend, so I decided to try to make paella. I don’t own a paella pan, and I honestly have no idea how to cook paella, so this should be quite the experience. I used a mixture of a recipe from Tyler Florence and one from Cooking Light, keeping my personal taste in mind.
Ingredients:
2 Spanish chorizo sausages, thickly sliced
1 Spanish onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
3 tablespoons parsley (fresh if you have it)
1 (15-ounce) can whole tomatoes, drained and roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon paprika
2 cups rice, whatever you have (long, short, doesn’t matter)
2 quarts plus 2 cups water
1/3 cup flour
1 cup dry white wine
2 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon saffron threads
1 (8-ounce) bottles clam juice
1 dozen littleneck clams, scrubbed
2 pounds mussels, debearded and scrubbed
Olive oil
Salt and pepper, to taste
1/2 cup sweet peas, frozen and thawed (optional)
Lemon wedges, for serving (optional)
Begin by cleaning and de-bearding the mussels. I couldn’t handle doing this, so thankfully my boyfriend was willing to help.
That wiry-looking thing on the right side of the mussel, that’s the beard. To remove, pull towards the hinge part of the mussel and tug.
yuck
The beards won’t hurt you if you eat them, but they don’t look particularly appetizing. Scrub the mussels to remove any gook that might be left on them. Discard any mussels that are open or cracked. Do the same with the clams. Put the clams and mussels in a mixture of 2 quarts water and 1/3 cup flour for 20 minutes. This helps to remove any sand that may still be in the mussels and clams.
Add the chicken broth, 2 cups water, 1 cup white wine, clam juice and saffron to a pot over medium heat. Simmer, without boiling, then reduce to low to keep warm.
Heat a tablespoon olive oil over medium-high heat. Place the cut chorizo in the pan and cook until browned. Remove and set aside.
Reduce the heat to medium and add the chopped onions, garlic and parsley. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes.
Add the tomatoes and paprika and cook for 5-10 minutes until fragrant.
Add the rice, stirring to coat the rice.
Pour in the saffron broth, simmering for 10 minutes.
Add chorizo, clams and mussels, tucking the clams and mussels into the rice.
Cook for 15 minutes without stirring, until the rice is fluffy and you can smell the rice at the bottom beginning to toast. (This is known as socarrat… paella is supposed to have a toasted bottom.)
Remove from heat and allow to rest for 5 minutes (it will be really, really hot). Serve with lemon wedges and peas if desired. Season with salt and pepper if needed.
I have to give myself a little pat on the back for this one (as well as my boyfriend for his wonderful de-bearding skills). Although I was craving a bit more saffron taste, this dish really turned out well overall. It is quite a bit of work, but it produces a whole lot of food, at least 8 servings. As always, don’t eat any clams or mussels that don’t open. A bunch of my clams didn’t open, kind of a bummer. I also think the next time I make this, I would reserve the liquid from the tomatoes and add that in as well for a little extra flavor.
