Authentic Spanish Seafood Paella | Christine Cushing

[Music] hi i'm christine cushing and welcome to another helping of my favorite foods today i want to help you master your technique for a pro approved spanish seafood paella it's going to be picture perfect and irresistibly delicious let's go my seafood of choice for this particular paella is going to be scallops shrimp and i'm going to throw in some mussels for a good measure okay step one we're going to start preparing the seafood i am using a beautiful paella pan here paella by the way in spanish means both the pan and the dish kind of like tagine it's the dish and the pan first thing i'm going to do is season my seafood first the shrimp and actually one little tip for the scallops because this is something that is my pet peeve so right here at the tip on the end of the scallop is what's called the foot that's what attaches the scallop to the shell you want to remove that because it is tough and chewy and let's just say when you're cooking anything in the mediterranean and spain is of course no exception you don't want to be afraid of the olive oil right so my pan is getting super hot i'm going to go in with first the shrimp and the scallops okay a little bit of cracked black i've salted them now right out of the gate i've kind of broken from tradition a little bit in that i'm searing the seafood you could just put these in towards the end and steam them but i like getting a little bit of that texture so look at that literally a minute and a half aside this one's going to have a lot of energy because it's really all about the mastering the technique right so i'm adjusting my temp here and because my scallops are small i'm just going to cook them for a very short period of time again getting a bit of color a bit of texture and a little bit of shimmy here i always get so excited when i'm making a paella okay a little bit of jimmy remove the seafood you see that color that i'm getting there that's what i want if i do it in the traditional method the seafood is just going to steam and it's going to be totally fine but what's going to happen is i'm not going to get this texture in color look at that oh already looking fantastic so you see they're just a couple of minutes away from doneness okay so that when i put them back in they're going to be perfectly cooked so my timing will be right and i'm going to get added texture from that to master the paella it's really not about the recipe per se it's about the ingredients first and foremost it's about technique which i'm showing you right now and it's about the timing next thing we start sofrito so the first step in the sofrito again i'm going to put my pan on my paella add the rest of the olive oil it feels like a lot but there's so many ingredients in here and in are going to go this is just basically one onion this paella is for four people i found this cute little paella when i was in valencia actually let me correct myself on that i didn't find it my husband found it we were in the market in valencia and he was just bent on getting it on bringing it home and i have to say i resisted because i thought oh man here we are where are we going to fit it where are we going to put it but that's why we have this beautiful little perfect paella for four people because typically they're massive right so it's quite challenging to to master that technique so it's good to start with a smaller one already temperature i want it to be kind of going towards medium low here not higher than that then we can talk about the piquillo this is now the beginning of the sofrito onions peppers look at these peppers this is the quintessential spanish pepper i love them i'm just obsessed with these peppers nothing really compares to them they are from spain they're very tough to find but i generally find them in a tin or in glass so these were brined gently brined so they're not super tangy and salty it's just like a delicate brine but just look at the texture of these amazing i'm going to keep my eye here because we are talking about technique i want to make sure the temperature is just right this dish is all about what's happening a la minute right you can't just wander off so even though we're talking here i want to make sure things are going perfectly smooth as in no burning of the onions right i want these to caramelize a bit and really render some sweetness [Music] next ingredient that's super important is the pimenton so when i was in valencia by the way i wanted to highly recommend that you watch i have another video called paella valenciana and that's the traditional original famous paella which has no seafood in it i was shocked too i know when i went there always smoked paprika but not spicy look at already the color happening there right it's all about that you can't even that paprika that smoke that's happening mixed with the onions and the piquilo i closed my eyes i'm smelling this i know i'm in spain even though i'm still in my kitchen next thing to go in after that caramelizes a little bit you know there's going to be some tomato that's really traditional in the sofrito this base also a couple of cloves of garlic going in garlic and i want to make sure my temperature isn't too high when the garlic goes in so that i don't burn it right so let's put the tomatoes into and now i'm going to crank the heat a little bit more i'm really doing it by eye you will have a full recipe below but this is like learning how to ride a bike you really want to get the feel of it so that's why i also wanted to show it to you in a small pan because when you get into the bigger pans it's harder to manage it right ridiculous the aroma just crazy good there's a lot of shimmying in making the paella now i want to season in layers not too much at a time i season the seafood i'm going to go in with a little bit of salt here with the sofrito and then i'm going to taste the stock as the rice is cooking just to manage it what have we not even talked about yet the rice so i want to introduce you to the rice of choice in valencia they use la bomba it is a beautiful and and a few other varieties that are locally grown around that mediterranean where the rivers kind of flow out into the mediterranean it's really stunning but it's a very specific kind of rice and what makes it ideal for this particular dish for this paella is i want to show it to you it is a rice that is short grain but quite specific in its short graininess let's say i want to show it to you it's sort of round not elongated and as it plumps up it really just expands so it can absorb three times its weight in moisture if you don't have a good rice you just cannot get the pro approved paella certification not a chance so i want this almost to come down to just be pasty not even any moisture left and can i say the number one way that your paella can turn into an absolute fail is to even think of putting chorizo in it that is like right away two thumbs down it's time for the rice to meet the sofrito you can't even imagine how appetizing this smells already so this step here is really coating the rice in all of those flavors the oil that sofrito in preparation for what's happening next and what's happening next oh it's getting even more exciting i like to add a little bit of sherry to deglaze my pan here so let's have a little sherry facial you can go with a dry white wine that's probably most common but the sherry for me because it's been aged in some oak it's giving me more complexity a touch of sweetness and i particularly love it with the shrimp that i'm adding here but really you can do whatever you like just don't use red wine don't do that so i just want to evaporate the sherry or the white wine whatever i use it's going to evaporate super quickly and then i'm going to add another very important ingredient in any paella is the saffron good quality saffron going in and the stock or the broth because this is seafood i'm going with a seafood stock here a great little tip if you want if you're in a pinch you can always use clam juice okay in going with the stock again the full recipe is below for you okay so i just want to bring this back now to a boil and now we're in the really important part so far the rice will not have absorbed any moisture and won't have changed it takes about six or seven minutes for the rice to start getting ready to plump up [Music] okay eight minutes in i have a decision to make here now this is very important so now the rice has started to absorb liquid it's almost cooked it doesn't really take that long so here's where you have to make some judgment calls what i'm going to do here is taste it just to see how the texture is it still has a bite it still has a bit of a bite but it's definitely almost tender so here's what i'm gonna do have a look in here there's still not quite a bit of moisture so i'm saving some stock i'm going to add that stock to it because the next thing i want to do is add my mussels and steam them in there so you notice how i'm not stirring anything i want the heat to be at a fairly kind of medium high so it's bubbling and now i'm going to put in the mussels and these are going to steam while the rice continues to cook and we get that beautiful what's called sokkara so sokkara in the spanish terminology means that crispy bottom of the rice that they absolutely love come on so i'm just gonna arrange these so that they steam properly and this is gonna be again another three or four minutes you see these guys are opening up now now i'm cranking up the heat parsley chopping [Music] and this here is all about just how it looks [Music] and then what's in this plate i also don't want to lose that that's the beautiful juices from the seafood i'm gonna pour that in too we're getting right to the nitty-gritty now here's another test is my temperature right what's happening inside i'm going to take my spoon i learned this in valencia i'm going to take my spoon and kind of insert it under there and i can feel that it's super loose so again i can crank the heat up a bit because i want to get that crispiness underneath the last thing i want to do is just sprinkle in the peas mean come on right they are going to approve this more peas for color really okay this is right on the money i can hear it i can smell it everything looks perfect i'm gonna just check the corner because i want to make sure i've got that crustiness there oh yeah so what i'm talking about i can't see you because i'm all steamed but this baby is looking good yeah you can really it's all kind of stuck to the bottom and that's what we want so i'm going to turn it off it's incredible how rice some seafood just a few aromatics can take you to all crazy places last thing i'm going to let it rest for a couple of seconds give it a nice handful of fresh parsley and you're going to be calling me when you make this seriously i promised you a pro approved spanish seafood paella look at this baby so to get that pro approval you got to have that soccer at that crispy bottom so i'm going in with my official valencia spoon you see this you hear that more importantly crazy good i'm gonna taste that oh yeah i can smell it from here insane wow that is a multiple thumbs up so so great and you get that real caramelization from the bottom of that and now the other thing the seafood is perfectly cooked so that little pro tip of pre-searing both the scallops and the shrimp really gives you that head start so you only have to worry about cooking the mussels properly and everything is magically amazingly cooked like look at these scallops are perfect oh yeah thank you for joining me on another helping of my favorite foods a little bit of a celebration some technique here hope you really try this recipe thumbs up like share let me know what's happening in your kitchen thank you so much

Channel: MyFavouriteFoods ChristineCushing

Views: 100,315

Keywords: Authentic Spanish Seafood Paella | Christine Cushing, seafood paella, How To Make Spanish Paella | Omar Allibhoy, Chef Christine Cushing, seafood paella recipe, How to make a Paella, Mastering Paella in Valencia Spain, Authentic Spanish Seafood Paella Recipe - Colab With Best Bites Forever, How-To: Make Paella Valenciana with Jamie Bissonnette, Casa Salvador, Spanish Paella Recipe with Seafood, La Albufera rice Valencia, Spain, Albufera, easy paella recipe, la receta de paella

Id: niLf52VZEBE

Length: 17min 37sec (1057 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021