• Home
• Soups
• Meats
• Seafood
• Eggs
• Sauces
• Vegetables
• Little Things
• Other

paella

2016-12-24

Paella is a seafood stew of Spanish Valencia origin, typically with saffron rice. I used frozen seafood mix of Sam’s Club (3.5 lbs.) as best locally available choice, removed the ‘surimi’ ( = fake crab) because they get mushy and taste horrible when cooked, I added 1 lb. of large tail-on shrimp instead.

Instead of fake crab flavor, I used the real thing: home-made Crab Stock. I even had to dilute it because the flavor was too intense. The crab stock gives the dish a wonderful flavor.

This seafood mix with squid and calamari should not cook more than 10 minutes and only on a low simmer. Longer cooking times or high heat will make the squid tough and rubbery. If using rice with longer cooking times, parboil the rice before adding the seafood mix.

Turmeric can be used as a substitute for saffron to give paella its yellow color.

INGREDIENTS

This is what you need for 4 servings:

• 2-3 cups crab/seafood stock
• 6 oz. long grain rice
• 1 ½ lb. seafood mix, thawed
• parsley
• saffron
  I used 1 pck. 'sazon Goya with saffron'
• S&P

Pic1: paella — 2017-02-17

Directions

• Prepare and measure the amount of seafood mix to use. (Pic2)
• Melt the needed amount of crab stock.
  • Dilute to taste to get the required amount of liquid for cooking the rice. (Pic3)
  • If no crab stock is available, use water and a cube of shrimp bouillon.
• Add the rice to the crab stock. Add saffron. Go easy on the salt.
• Bring to a boil and simmer required cooking time minus 10 minutes. (Pic4)
• Stir in the seafood mix. (Pic5)
  If you have larger shellfish, leave them on top.
• Bring to a near-boil again and simmer over low heat for another 10 minutes. (Pic6)
  If you used the correct amount of liquid, the rice should be showing by now. (Pic7)
• Switch off the heat and rest 10 minutes to let the rice swell further.
• Serve and enjoy. (Pic1, Pic8+9)

2016-12-24 

Pic2: frozen seafood
Pic3: melting crab stock
Pic4: parboiling rice

 

Pic5: add seafood
Pic6: simmer
Pic7: 30 min. later, almost done

 

 

• Home
• Soups
• Meats
• Seafood
• Eggs
• Sauces
• Vegetables
• Little Things
• Other