re: First time making paella

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Mix in cooked rice and whatever proteins you like - sausage, crawfish, shrimp etc.

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I think cooking the rice topped with chicken adds a lot of flavor to the rice

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Sorry, I’m slow, can you clarify if the rice is cooked ahead of time or if it’s uncooked when placing the chicken on top?

Looks like it’s precooked, but just want to make sure. Looks great!

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Sorry, I’m slow, can you clarify if the rice is cooked ahead of time or if it’s uncooked when placing the chicken on top?

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Every recipe I came across had me put the rice in raw to absorb the broth

Just make “New Orleans jambalaya” bc it’s paella with tomatoes instead of saffron

I love making paella on my grill and it's one of the dishes I like to make for a small group. I started with a recipe from The Naked Whiz but I've modified it for my tastes. Here's my basic process going off of this recipe for rice/water measurements:

LINK

For the broth I follow their directions with toasting and then steeping in chicken stock.

For meat I only use chicken and sausage. I'll use a pack of boneless thighs (and sometimes add the drum from wings) that I brown directly on the grill. They'll finish cooking fully later. My biggest change is use andouille instead of chorizo due to personal tastes. I just call it my cajun paella. I'll then brown the sausage in the paella pan and remove.

I cut a red pepper into short strips and sautee that in the sausage grease and remove. This is slightly different from the recipe I posted. Then I fully saute the onions. Add in diced garlic for a minute (different from the recipe with the whole garlic that typically ends up burning). Then add in the tomatoes following the prep directions with the grating and cook down till juice is gone.

Add in the good bomba rice and saute for a minute or two. Then add the stock, meat and peppers. I also like to add green peas. The main purpose of the peppers and peas is the hits of green and red color in the yellow dish. You also eat with your eyes.

After that it's closing the lid and cooking until it's done. Usually takes around 25-45 minutes depending on the temp of the grill. When it's almost done I crank up the heat to get the soccarat. I will say that getting the soccarat right is the hardest part to get consistent. But when it's right it's so good.

My biggest advice is to prep everything completely before you start cooking this on a grill. Keeping the temp down at or under 400 before you close the lid is hard. I'll usually brown the meats and veggies at 350 or lower to start because the temp will start rising. You don't want to finish the dish off at 500 degrees. If everything is prepped you can cook everything like an assembly line. You'll probably mess it up the first couple of times but it's hard to completely ruin. At the end of the day you're trying to burn it a little for a perfect paella so don't stress if you burn more than you want. It's just less leftovers.

Y'all got me hungry up in here. I don't know that I've ever had real paella bit I've always wanted to since I'm a rice lover and it definitely seems to be the kind of thing up my alley. Just never had the opportunity. What's a good place in BR that makes it? I kind of want to try it before I make it (but I also def wanna try to make it one day)