Paella Recipe - Lazy Man's Paella Parellada

Before starting this paella recipe

The Paella Parellada is quite a baroque rice dish with shelled shellfish, and boned and skinned fowl, meat and fish cooked in a traditional paella pan. The point of this rice dish is that it is made in such a way that you need neither a knife to eat it nor making your hands dirty with shellfish shells as our hero Mr Juli Parellada loved.

You can make this rice dish almost as baroque as you like, adding many different sorts of fish and meat. For this paella recipe we have chosen our preferred paella Parellada version, which doesn't go overboard with the choice of ingredients.

Seafood paella ingredients

Serves 4 as main course

• 1 3/4 cup (360 g) rice – use bomba paella rice or short-grain rice, but not Italian risotto rice
• 8 tablespoons olive oil
• 5 ounces (150 g) chicken – skinned, boned and diced
• 5 ounces (150 g) boneless pork loin – diced
• 5 ounces (150 g) small pork sausages – cut into bite-size pieces
• 1 medium-sized squid – cleaned and cut into rings
• 1 medium-size sepia cuttlefish – cleaned and cut into bite-size pieces
• 5 ounces (150 g) monkfish – skinned, boned and cut into bite-size pieces
• 8 shrimps – peeled
• 12 mussels – cleaned, cooked in water until opened and shelled
• 2 1/2 ounces (75 g) < strong>peas
• 1 medium-sized onion – finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic – minced
• 1 pinch saffron
• 1 sprig flat Italian parsley
• 2 medium-sized ripe tomatoes – peeled and chopped, Alternatively, seed them if tomato seeds bother you
• 1/2 teaspoon salt or salt to taste
• 1 quart (1 l) boiling water

How To Make Paella Instructions

Preparation time: about 30 minutes
Cooking time: about 35 minutes
Main kitchen tool: Paella pan. Failing this, try a flat-bottomed pan

1. Rinse the mussels under running water and clean them. Heat some water in a large pot and when it boils add the mussels and cook over medium fire until they open. As soon as the mussels open, remove from fire and shell them. Discard the shells and the mussels that didn't open spontaneously and set them aside for a later stage in this paella recipe.


2. Season the chicken and pork meat with some salt.


3. Add 4 tablespoons olive oil to a paella pan and when it's hot add the chicken, pork loin and sausages and saute until the pieces are just a little bit goldened.


4. Add the remainig 4 tablespoons olive oil, wait a moment for it to be hot and add the chopped onion, stir and cook for about 5 minutes.


5. Add the squid, cuttlefish, monkfish and shrimps and stir and cook for a little while. If you are adding halved artichoke hearts add them at this point.


6. Add the chopped tomato, minced garlic, peas, and parsley, and cook for at least 12 minutes to caramelize the sofregit.


7. In the meantime bring the water or fish stock to boil.


8. When the sofregit is ready, add the rice and stir for 2 minutes. Increase the flame to medium high and add the mussels, boiling water and salt to taste. The water should cover the rice liberally.


9. Cook for 18 to 20 minutes over a high flame the first 10 or 12 minutes, and over medium heat the last minutes. The paella parellada should cook until all water has evaporated and the rice is done.


10. Once the paella recipe is done let it stand for 5 minutes but not much longer off the heat before serving. While you let the paella stand, you can cover it with 2 or 3 newspaper pages. It helps to get the rice al dente. The delicious paella parellada is then ready to be served.

Alternative ingredients and substitutes

The ingredients vary depending on the restaurant or the Catalan home, but you generally have cuttlefish and/or squid, shrimps or prawns and mussels or clams, and two different types of meat. You can replace the chicken with rabbit. In winter you usually add halved artichoke hearts that replace the peas. You can also replace the peas with green beans if you like. Alternatively, you can add a firm-fleshed ocean whitefish other than monkfish and replace the small sausages with pork spareribs. Finally you can add fumet or fish broth instead of water for an even more intense fish flavor.

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