Paella Valenciana | Kenji's Cooking Show

hey everyone it's kenji and i'm going to make a paella valentiana and pardon my pronunciation [Music] so paella valenciana valenciana or as they call them colombia paella valenciana um which is just i'm gonna call it for now because that's just sort of my natural spanish accent is the colombian one um so i'm doing this mainly right now to test out this wok burner to see whether it works [Music] works for a paella pan as well and i don't see why it won't so i hope it will all right so the first thing we're going to do get a good amount of olive oil in here and wow i can already tell it's too hot maybe a half cup or so so paella valenciana is generally made with chicken and rabbit i do not have any rabbit so i'm doing it with just chicken you might also in some parts of valencia some you might find it done with snails um that would not be an uncommon thing but my daughter my daughter actually has snails here she she has a little terrarium and keeps this nail collection uh but i'm not about to raid her later tank um things that are not traditionally in valenciana seafood that would be a paella mixta or peraya de mariscos depending on what you put in it but uh no seafood in pineapple valenciana and if you want to be very traditional about it no chorizo either although i personally do enjoy the flavor of chorizo in a maya there are there are some people um mainly on reddit who would be visibly angered but by putting chorizo by taya but you know what i guess as long as you don't call it paella valenciana do whatever you want and even if you do want to call it violence by valencia even if it isn't who's gonna stop you all right so i'm gonna use i'm gonna do a couple cups of rice here about two and a half cups um i'd say that's around uh 200 grams or so um so the way i learned to make paella was at a restaurant um called toro uh in boston ken oranger's restaurant it now has a now has a location in new york as well although i think now with coronavirus um i'm not sure if either location is currently open and i've heard from my dad who still lives in boston i've heard that the austin location might be permanently closed but i'm not sure i would really hope not because it was a great restaurant um had a good long run though um i think i think it opened like 2006 or 2005 that's when i was working there right when it worked first open um and yeah we did a couple paellas there um cooked them to order my favorite one was the mixto which is made with um lobster stock lobster and chicken stock which we made by roasting lobster shells and chicken bones and then we would cook them down into a uh cook them down with a bunch of roasted vegetables um into a delicious stock and that was the base that was the base flavor of the paella that one also contained mussels and clams garlic marinated shrimp gumbas chicken and chorizo this thing is obviously going to take a bit of adjustment it's real hot this out so this burner is a hundred sixty thousand btus um so that compared to a regular home indoor burner uh well an indoor burner typically is it around the um maybe your maybe your home burner if you've got a real power fund we'll get up to 2500 btus maybe 3000 bp um uh sorry 20 25 000 if you've got a real powerful burner but most home home burners um the hot burner on a home burner is going to be maxed out at around 10 000 bpus or so um and many of them are much less than that even all right so we're looking just to get a little bit of browning on this chicken so far i've seasoned it with some kosher salt and that's it okay i'm going to clear a little space in the center here i'm going to dump in some beans so typically in paella you would have you'd have beans called which are i believe in the us we call them runner beans so they're kind of thicker wider than um than typical green beans but i'm using green beans because i am currently chicken sitting my neighbor alana's chickens and she has a bunch of green beans going in her garden and told me to help myself so i did and i'm sticking them in my paella all right beans and then the other ones are these which in spanish are i think they're called uh i don't know the spanish they speak in spain is very different from the spanish they speak in colombia and so i'm familiar with all the food terms for colombian spanish but not for spanish not for the spanish they speak in spain so i don't really know but um they're lima beans lima beans or butter beans um if you can get them fresh cool i'm using them frozen just because that's what i that's what i have but uh meat and beans so those are the main ingredients in a saya valenciana valenciana keep it moving moving all right i think we found a pretty happy temperature now we're gonna clear out another little spot here and then in is gonna go some garlic a few cloves that i've chopped you don't want to let that burn so we're going to mix it right in with everything [Music] else these are enormous chicken legs i got them at the local latin market at the thighs i had to cut into two pieces each because they're so gigantic um i don't know where these chickens come from monster chickens but um generally when meat is bigger it means it's going to have more flavor but be a little bit tougher but that's actually all right for a dish like this because [Music] because it's going to slow cook it's going to simmer down and braise basically so it'll become nice and tender as the rice cooks all right next step uh tomatoes so these are just roma tomatoes i'm gonna do the same thing make a little space for and then i'm going to grate them on a box grater so doing it with the flat of my hand i'm pushing him through until i get to the skin and then i can just discard the skin i'm doing three of them probably two of them would have been enough but i cut three so i'll just use them up this is a great way oops well as long as you don't drop it on the ground like that anytime you're going to use canned tomatoes and you have haven't have fresh tomatoes around that you want to use like in the summer that grading method is great get it it's because great has it's a it's a homophone it has two different meanings that sound the same one of them means that it's like really good um and the other one is the action of grading something to rub it against the surface and break it into smaller pieces it's called a pun all right what's next all right so now we're getting into our final layer of seasoning that's going to be some of this which i always have trouble opening these damn jars all right pimenton spanish smoked paprika about a couple teaspoons of it today and saffron a little pinch of it saffron ounce per ounce the most expensive thing in the world i think i don't know what's more expensive there's probably some drug out there that's more expensive i'm just going to bloom that in the rendered chicken fat a little some olive oil then mix it all in and that saffron and paprika we're going to give or what's going to give the rice it's beautiful color oh hi shabu now traditionally and i think typically in spain the way this is now done is that you would add your liquid um let the chicken cook a little bit and then sprinkle in the rice but i prefer personally to do mine more similar to like a risotto so i'm gonna add my rice directly to this pan so that it has a chance to toast a bit and because i think it personally i personally think it gives it a better finished texture so similar to how toasting rice before you make risotto gives you rice that has a little bit of a bite to it at the end even after it's cooked it's going to do a similar thing here all right so i'm adding my rice do it toasting a little bit toasting toasting toasting um by the way this is definitely possible to do on an indoor burner um you just do it on your biggest friend you just have to kind of move it around a little bit so that it the paella pan heats evenly this is a big pan this is 16 inch i believe maybe 17 inch so this one is enough to make paella for like five or six people um if you do it on an indoor burner you just have to kind of move the pan around so that um as it cooks so that you kind of heat the bottom surface evenly all right so the ratio i use is if you have two and a half cups of rice oh one second alicia just hold on one moment and i'll be right with you okay let me just finish adding this water and i'll and i'll pause the video um when i have two and a half cups of rice hold on a second i do double about two and a half times what i did before so that was two two and a half times the volume of water as there is rice that's about the ratio i use all right let me let me go address my daughter and i'll be right back hold on what's up alicia okay my daughter needs some cheese and milk for while she's watching dora the explorer right now okay so we're gonna now basically just nestle this chicken in make sure that all the rice is submerged you know what's funny i should have i should have checked that the ground here is level before i started because all the liquids pooling on one side but hopefully that won't make a huge difference um and then once that bit is done um let me let me taste the broth first it's definitely gonna need some salt um by the way you don't have to use water if you have you know if you have a good chicken stock you can do that good vegetable stock you could do that too i'm just using water because i don't have chicken stock right now but even with water it's going to be delicious because there there's so much seasoning coming from you know both from cooking the the raising the chicken um but also from the saffron and the garlic and the pimenton um and if i if i i'm insulting anyone from spain with anything i'm doing here right now you know i apologize in advance i don't mean to insult your cuisine um i'm just doing doing this in a way that i've learned how to do it through from various teachers and through trial and error a little bit from what i've seen traveling in spain and that's it all right last thing last but not least rosemary um this by the way paella is a great dish to make over a campfire if you bring all these ingredients with you camping make this over a campfire and then get bundles and bundles of rosemary like if you've got a rosemary bush in your backyard you probably know that it just grows like hell and there's not much you can do about it paella is a great dish to do when you've got a ton of rosemary so what you can do is build a campfire um build make the paella on top of it and then throw bundles of rosemary onto the fire below and it will smell wonderful and season everything and make everyone really hungry on a campfire was actually um when i first started dating my wife um when i thought she was my girlfriend and she did not think i was her boyfriend uh we went camping uh and i and i made pie on the campfire mainly to impress her so um it's all worked out in the end so if you uh if you ever get the opportunity to do it do it it's wonderful all right i'm gonna take the bro taste the broth for seasoning it's delicious um bear in mind when you're tasting your broth for seasoning like this that it's going to get more concentrated so you want it to be slightly under seasoned [Applause] all right um i'm gonna go do that thing for my daughter this is gonna keep going basically you don't really have to touch it now um i might turn the chicken over once just because this is such a giant chicken but we're going over um you know on an indoor burner this would be high heat uh out here it's out here it's about as moderate as this burner gets um so i'm gonna let this go without touching until basically the rice is cooked and it all dries out and that should take about about 10 minutes so this actually ended up cooking the water cooked down a little faster than expected probably because this is a hotter burner than i'm used to so it's looking a little dry for 10 minutes in the total cooking time will end up being about 20 to 25 minutes so i'm just gonna add a little bit more water i mean you know i lied before i i mis i didn't look at my cup right but of course it doesn't matter because i'm going on ratio so i actually use a cup and a half of rice not two and a half cups of rice um that's okay you can use basically what you're aiming for is around 100 grams of rice per person but tonight it's me and my daughter my wife's not in right now it's me and my daughter so it doesn't really matter if we have not enough rice and i'm gonna flip over this chicken just so that it makes sure that it cooks through because it's so ginormous um the rice i'm using by the way is um bomba which is the what is typically used for um uh paella it's a it's a it's a short grain rice similar to um you know similar to like what you would use for risotto like similar to like a carnaroli or a or an arborio or a um um what is it called viola nanos whatever whatever the other uh whatever the other risotto rice is um short grain rice if you if you can't find it um you can use arborio just fine which these days i think you can find most places um or any kind of rice you know it's it the short grain rice like the arborio those are barrio style rices they'll give you a slightly creamier texture than bomba will then if you go down to something like a you know like a carolina style medium grain rice it'll make it even less creamy so but none of them are going to be bad you know it really just depends what you um what you want and of course what you have access to so don't let anybody tell you that you use the wrong type of rice for your paella because the right type of rice is to use the one that you have similarly you know like the idea that paella must have chicken and rabbit and snails for instance um to me you know it's sometimes a little silly because you know the reason those things are used is because it's a a peasants dish right and snails were snails and chicken and rabbit were things that you could just hunt for and where well maybe not the chicken but the rabbit and the snails were things that you just hunt for and get for free and so it was it was a peasant peasant food you know um and so the idea i don't think is that you necessarily need chicken and snail and rabbit i think the more authentic idea is that you work with what you can get and work with what you can afford and work work with what you have access to so if that means all chicken for you cool um and if you live you know like if you if you grew up where my dad did in western pennsylvania and you trap raccoons or trap squirrels um then put that in your paella and i'd say that's a pretty authentic paella um if you got if your daughter has too many snails in her terrarium you know raid the terrarium and use the snails anyhow all right so this is just going to keep cooking for another 10 minutes or so and here we are i think we're looking pretty good now um so you can see the liquid is mostly evaporated out which is what you want um paella should be a relatively dry dish not kind of soupy um although again do it the way you want it you know um and now i'm just going to pump up the heat just a tiny bit because i want to form what's called the um the sukhara the um the crust again that goes up against the bottom of the pan by the way the dish is called paella and it's named after the vessel which is called the paella but you don't have to make it in a paella pan like this you can make it in like a cast iron skillet you can make it in a carbon steel skillet anything that's sort of um heavy and metal and is going to allow you to form a nice crust on the bottom um will work and of course you can do it indoors um if you if you don't have an uh have a um a gas burner like this outside you can do it um well you could do it on turkey fryer you know like one of these types of things a turkey fryer you could also do it um on top of a kettle grill all you would do is um you know set up the coals make a pile of them in the center and then slide the paella in and out and around to sort of adjust the temperature is it going all right i think we're just about there let me just taste it yeah and i can smell the crust is i can smell the crust for me oops this one all right the last thing i'm going to add um i have these jarred picchio peppers which um are not necessary another way you could do it is to um you know roast some use roasted red peppers um or or nothing at all and you definitely don't need the peppers but i'm just going to stick them on there because i had them picking peppers are like a really nice sweet um they're not not spicy at all they're really nice sweet pepper they have a little bit more flavor than a um than a typical bell pepper does and a little more tender tender flesh um peppers get some lemon some people like to you know make like patterns and stuff and i just i prefer the whole kind of haphazard look carefully arrange the lemons so it looked like i let them fall where they made all right and that's basically it um paella valenciana made with chicken no rabbit green beans rosemary lima beans bomba rice saffron garlic [Music] and i think that's it right is that all there was salt all right should we dig in and try some um that rosemary oh yeah all right so here we have that nice sokkarat those brown crispy bits oh olive oil of course all right my daughter i see her climbing out of the dog door she's gonna come join me in a second so i'm gonna take this opportunity to say goodbye guys gals and non-binary pals i will see you next time you

Channel: J. Kenji López-Alt

Views: 553,247

Keywords:

Id: ASP74I0B7zo

Length: 23min 57sec (1437 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/J_Kenji_Lopez-Alt]

*valenciana

[u/schmandarinorange]

Loved the video Kenji (though I’ll admit I was on the edge of my seat at the beginning when the chicken was searing — the fond looked like it was going to burn!)! Definitely going to make a paella this weekend.

I just have a quick question about the rice:liquid ratio. You mention that it’s 1:2.5 rice:liquid ratio for this dish, but bomba/Arborio rice is short grain. This ratio seemed dramatic for me, since the rule of thumb for long grain rice calls for less liquid for a rice that absorbs more water. Either way it worked out great for this dish, but might I ask why the ratio here is larger?

[u/RassimoFlom]

I haven’t watched this video.

I don’t really even like Paella.

But I guarantee you a Spanish person will show up and complain about this.

Edit: not yet. In an ironic twist of fate, I’m the arsehole here.

[u/Factuary88]

Thank you.for all that you do Kenji!

[u/princessprity]

I still would love for you to troll the shit out of Spaniards and make a basic risotto and call it paella.

[u/Mono_831]

I’ve always wanted to try this on my Weber, just afraid I won’t be able to control the heat that well.

[u/Jdtrinh]

"It's called a pun"