How to cook an authentic paella

Today is World Paella Day and to celebrate, here’s how to cook an authentic version, based on what I’ve learned living in Valencia, the dish’s spiritual home.

A huge mural of a paella pan in Valencia.

To mark this auspicious date, the World Paella Day Cup takes place in Valencia. The competing chefs are selected by the public and filtered by a jury made up of top professionals.

Each one chooses the paella recipe with which to compete and, as it says on the official website: “...there is only one requirement: the rice must be dry, loose, whole, and tasty. In other words, it must be a paella.”

Paella means a lot to the Spanish, but to be accurate, it is the dish of Valencia, not just the city, but the wider region which stretches from south of Barcelona down to Alicante. 

Valencians take it very seriously, and if it deviates from the ‘accepted’ ingredients, it cannot be called paella. In that case, it is a rice dish—rice and whatever you add to it.

The UK chef Jamie Oliver caused an uproar when he suggested that the humble paella (it ain’t so humble) could be improved with certain ingredients such as garlic. 

If he had stamped on the Spanish flag and questioned the manhood of a matador, I doubt he would have gotten a worse reaction. The insult was felt far and wide, and I doubt he will ever be forgiven. 

It reminds me of what the great and much-lamented chef Keith Floyd said when talking about Quiche Lorraine—don’t use it as a culinary dustbin. The temptation with any dish like this is to experiment with a large number of ingredients because you can. And sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t.

You don’t mess with paella—full stop. It is so deeply ingrained in the psyche of Valencians that where we live, a town about 20 minutes from the city, virtually every house has an area in the garden where the paella is cooked, and a selection of paella pans are stored.

These round pans are important, and some can be huge, well over a metre wide. They are made of cheap-ish steel and are about four centimetres deep. But this is not about depth—a cooked paella will only be about a centimetre deep. This is not a risotto.

The layer of rice needs to be thin because the most coveted part of paella is the crispy bottom that forms if it cooks properly. This is known as socarrat and comes from the word socarrar, meaning “to burn” or “to scorch.” It’s fought over as a true delicacy.

These are the ten ingredients:

- Olive oil
- Rabbit/Chicken
- Green beans
- White butter beans (Garrofa)
- Salt
- Saffron
- Rosemary
- Tomatoes
- Rice
- Water

My paella kitchen

Now, horror of horrors, you can experiment with different ingredients, but don’t invite someone from Valencia to give you praise. They won’t. 

Good optional ingredients include:

- Paprika
- Snails
- Garlic
- Pork ribs
- Artichokes
- Duck

You can also have a seafood paella (a seemingly acceptable variation, as is another made with black rice), but in reality, if you stray away from the first ten commandments above, you can’t really call it paella.

As for the cooking, tradition and lore also have it that it should only be cooked over an open orange-wood fire, by a man, at Sunday lunchtime (which for the Spanish starts around 2.30pm and goes on to around five). 

This makes some sense.

Traditionally, such heavy dishes that require time and love were cooked at the weekend. And similar to many men who wouldn’t be seen dead in the kitchen but will cook on a BBQ, so Spanish men feel about the paella dish.

Orange wood is also a sensible choice, given that orange groves surround the city and there’s a plentiful supply. 

Okay, it is quite an easy dish to put together, and although the ingredients are stuck to religiously, the amount used of each one and when they are added to the dish allow for varying flavours to develop. 

Also, there is a real skill needed to keep the fire just right. What you don’t want is rapid heat one minute, then not enough the next. What you need is quite intense heat at first, then a dimmer heat as the water is kept simmering to be absorbed by the rice.

Chefs use batons of wood that vary in thickness from top to bottom. They burn like torches from the top down, meaning they can be easily manoeuvred to give you degrees of heat intensity.

Okay, here we go. I’ve made it many times, a process of trial and error.

For about four to six people, I do it this way.

Get the fire lit and leave it until it's quite an intense heat. Position the paella pan—around a metre in diameter, with two handles—around 20 cm above the flames. Pour in a good glug of olive oil so that the surface of the pan is liberally coated with the stuff.

Wait until the oil gets hot and then throw in the chicken (about half a bird, cut into bite-sized chunks). I don’t use rabbit unless I can get a wild one—commercial rabbit farming is not good. Although the same goes for the chicken—try to get one that is corn-fed and has seen the outside.

Don’t forget the key is the fire. You need an initial strong heat, tampering down to keep the paella simmering, but not cooking it too quickly.

Now come some varying methods. You can take out the browned chicken and throw in the chopped tomato, the green beans, a jar of the white beans, a good pinch of salt, and some saffron threads (not too much, as it can overpower the end result).

Then add the water, around one and a half litres. To the hot water, you add the rice.

Known as arroz bomba, or bomba rice, it is grown around the city of Valencia and reflects how the dish originated—feeding farmers using ingredients grown in the region.

Add in around 300 g of rice - don’t use too much - otherwise, there will be too much rice in the pan. What you want is about a centimetre of rice left, with the bits of meat and other ingredients sitting up like islands.

Then you can add the chicken back in.

I prefer rice in, before the water.

What I prefer to do is throw the rice into the pan before the water, as it adds a nutty flavour if you very slightly toast it. Then pour in the water. Too little, and the rice won't absorb enough water, and too much will drown it.

Then I throw in a chopped tomato, the fresh green beans, a jar of the white beans, a good pinch of salt, and a few saffron threads (not too much, as it can overpower the end result). And that's it; give it a quick stir and leave it to bubble away at a healthy simmer.

At this stage, it’s far easier than a risotto, in which you add a small amount of the water and stock at a time.

The water, which at this stage is around two centimetres deep, will need to be kept simmering. Over about half an hour to 40 minutes, the water will disappear as it's absorbed by the rice. Now you need to keep an eye on it.

You want just a hint of moisture, but once you start to smell it burn, which is creating the crust, remove the dish from the flame, cover it in foil, and let it sit for a good ten minutes.

That should give you a perfect paella. 

Bring the paella to the table with a bit of ceremony and flourish, and enjoy - it is one of the world's truly delicious dishes.

Ready for the table.