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Paella
The benchmark seafood paella — a long-cooked sofrito, proper fumet, and a deliberate socarrat crust; the rice is the star, the seafood its crown
- Prep
- 40 min
- Cook
- 45 min
- Serves
- 6
Ingredients
- Bomba rice — 500 g
- Prawn shells and fish bones for fumet — 600 g
- Water — 1800 ml
- Raw prawns, peeled (shells reserved) — 400 g
- Squid, cleaned, rings — 300 g
- Mussels — 500 g
- Ripe tomatoes, grated — 300 g
- Ñora pepper flesh — 10 g
- Garlic, chopped — 15 g
- Sweet smoked paprika — 6 g
- Saffron threads — 0.5 g
- Extra virgin olive oil — 90 ml
- Fine sea salt — 10 g
- Lemon — 160 g (2)
Method
- Make fumet: brown prawn shells and bones in 20 ml oil, cover with water, simmer 30 minutes, strain — you need 1500 ml, seasoned assertively.
- Toast saffron in a dry ladle 10 seconds; steep in 50 ml hot fumet.
- In a 46 cm paella pan, sear squid in 40 ml oil over high heat 2 minutes; push aside.
- Add remaining oil, garlic and ñora flesh 30 seconds, then grated tomato; cook the sofrito 12–15 minutes until brick-dark and jammy. Bloom paprika 15 seconds.
- Add rice; toast in the sofrito 2 minutes until pearly.
- Pour in hot fumet and saffron; spread rice evenly — do not stir again. Boil hard 8 minutes.
- Reduce to a simmer; nestle in prawns and mussels hinge-down at minute 10; cook until liquid is gone, 16–18 minutes total.
- Raise heat 60–90 seconds, listening for a dry crackle, to form the socarrat; rest under a cloth 5 minutes.