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My husband and I always order paella when we go to tapas restaurants. This year I wanted to try to make one at home. Last week, we stopped at Sur La Table and bought a 13.5″ paella pan.

I have never made paella so I went online and read over several recipes made both with and without a paella pan. I picked the ingredients we liked and went shopping. The challenge came in figuring out the preparation and cooking time because we did not use the same ingredients from any one recipe. So I winged it.  And guess what? It turned out great!!!

I always thought that making paella was way too complicated for the average cook, but really, it is just a lot of ingredients to chop up.

Ingredients:

1-2 tablespoon of olive oil

3 cups of chicken stock

1 box (12oz. package) of Valencia rice (I used Goya Brand)

1 onion, chopped

1 red pepper, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

1 lbs. sausage*

1 1bs. raw shrimp

2 cloves of garlic, minced

3 tomatoes, chopped in chunky pieces

2 tsp dried Rosemary

1 tbsp. paprika

Notes: I bought a bag of frozen peas, but there was no room left in the pan! Next time, I might add asparagus in place of one of the peppers.

*We used smoked sausage, but you could try a jalapeno sausage or Spanish Chorizo to give the dish a little more kick.

Preparation:

First things first. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Then get to work chopping up the veggies. It is important to have everything cut and ready to go before you get started. I just put them in containers and stacked them up in the fridge. Defrost shrimp if frozen by running under cold water.

Cook sausage separately in a frying pan so you can drain any grease. Put aside.

Place paella pan on stove over two burners. Or, in my case, I have one of those big oblong burners in the middle and just put the paella pan on that. Add olive oil, peppers, onions and garlic to pan and sauté 3 to 5 minutes until soft.

Remove pan from heat and stir in package of rice until it is mixed in evenly.

Next, stir in tomatoes, cooked sausage and broth and return pan to heat on simmer for 15 minutes.

Mix in rosemary, paprika and salt to taste. I had already pre-measured that so it went pretty quickly.

Lastly, I added the raw shrimp on top of the rice mixture which had not completely cooked.

Transfer pan to oven – uncovered. (I put the pan on a cookie sheet in case it overflowed.) Cook 15 minutes until almost all the liquid is absorbed but rice is still al dente.

Remove from oven and cover with foil so it can finish cooking – 5 to 10 minutes. Taste the rice to see if it is cooked enough for you. If not, keep covered a little while longer.

Recommended serving is six, but not as the only course. It would be better for four people. We made this for two but had leftovers for the next day.

This meal is the last course in my Tapas Party Plan which includes four other menu items, games, activities and more.

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