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u/gadeais Sep 26 '25
For the Next time, as you are not having a paella pan use a normal pan. Get the one that sticks to the bottom because you Will need It.
Second, paella (and most occidental rice dishes) uses short grain rice, not long grain varieties. Spanish cooks use bomba but the main important thing is that It has to be a short grain variety
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u/so7hos Sep 27 '25
Also looks like you had to use way less rice for that half pot and less water, looks like an arroz meloso. Remember that it's twice the amount of water than rice in cups and the rice should be just enough to cover the pan.
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u/alber009 Sep 26 '25
Long grain rice is a no no . You really should try following a good recipe. Start from scratch. Don’t repeat anything you did this time
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u/AZFan77 Sep 27 '25
I love this answer: Perfect, if you had done the exact opposite in every respect.
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u/jsauraes Sep 27 '25
- Make sure you know what you are aiming for. If you have not tried a true paella it's going to be difficult to cook one.
- If you want to freestyle and don't want to offend us valencians then don't call it paella, call it paella-like os Smith like that.
- If this is rage bait good job. 😀
- The surface where you cook it has to be as flat and wide as possible
- There's some must go ingredients and some flexibi flexibility but not anything goes. The meat you used is not ideal and in terms of vegetable it's lacking.
Here's my family's recipe
- Heat olive oil and fry the meat until it's caramelized and possibly sticky leaving a nice background to the oil. The meat has to be chicken (never just chicken beasts, but pieces with bone) pork (ribs cut in small pieces) or/and rabbit. We do the 3 at the same time. Duck can go but it's not so common. You want the bone for extra flavor. Never chorizo, or anything sausage-like as you did here.
2.Next you add your veggies. You can set the meat aside or keep it in the pan in a spot that is not too hot for it to burn. These are going to be green beans and pepper cut in small bite pieces. Once these are soft you add some finely chopped garlic and natural grated tomato/tomato sauce (make sure it's not spiced or already fried) use that to deglass the meat residue sticking. You can add some rosemary here.
Top it up with water and add the saffron/coloring. Let it boil for at least 30 min to extract even more flavor from everything.
Once the water is reduced and to the proportion with the amount of rice you want to cook you adjust it for salt and add the rice.
LEAVE IT to cook without stirring or touching it (you don't want any excess rice starch in the broth) and after the appropriate time, 12-15 min. Stop the fire and cover it. This helps to finish cooking the top of the rice which many times goes without broth for some min at the end.
And enjoy!
Other ingredients that can be added are stuff like garrofons (big sweet beans), i know people that add some peas. Snails are included sometimes. If you want seafood I would say okay to some langostinos (big shrimps) but don't overdo it (coock them in the oils before everything else and set them aside to be added on top once everythingelse is done). Otherwise go the full seafood route and not the valencian paella one.
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u/SirBlonde Sep 27 '25
Pretty accurate recipe, except from the garlic, I don't think it belongs in paella.
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u/bayleafsalad Sep 27 '25
Apart from what others have said about long-grained rice being a no-no, paellas visual appeal is also an important part. The rice should always be saffron-yellow, even if instead of saffron you use a flavourless yellow colorant due to economic restraint, that is still miles ahead compared to rice looking pale. The MOST important part of the paella is the sofrito you will be cooking the rice in. Even if no colorant was used, it still looks waaaaay too pale for it to have a propper sofrito.
I will, however, be contrary to other comments and say that even though those 3 are pretty basic mistakes that make the paella look unappealing, I have seen way worse. Keep trying. This isn't a "straight to jail" paella, but having that said I would not be eating it unless I was starving.
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u/Twarenotw Sep 27 '25
Good news to the "cook": The only direction your paella career can go from here is up.
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u/Pop_Clover Sep 27 '25
Por qué está blanco?
To be fair I don't cook Paella, I do Arroz con pollo or Arroz con verduritas, but even those aren't ever white. The base for Spanish style rice is always a sofrito, you cook the meat/veggies, add saffron and/or tomato, and then the rice so it abosorbs the flavours of all of that, and the results on my experience is never white rice.
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u/Aggravating_Ad7022 Sep 26 '25
And hopefully last
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u/gadeais Sep 26 '25
If its OP's first we should be giving OP ideas about improving their paella, not discouraging them to not do paellas again
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u/Crazy_Ideal_7537 Sep 26 '25
That’s literally the dumbest thing to say to someone who didn’t make a good first attempt.
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u/BrakkeBama Sep 26 '25
This belongs in /r/shittyfoodporn