Paella: why a Valencian will not discuss chorizo

There is a category of dishes about which one should not be casual in the country of origin. Paella belongs to it, and the gap between the argument there and the picture elsewhere is wide.

Where it comes from

Paella comes from the Valencian Community. In its modern form it traces back to the middle of the nineteenth century, to the countryside around the Albufera de València lagoon beside the city.

It is not a coastal dish and not a city dish. It is a dish from the rice fields, made of what that landscape had to hand. Short-grain rice, chicken, rabbit, flat green beans and white beans, saffron. Seafood was not originally in it.

How it spread

As the dish became known, it grew with whoever made it. Outside Valencia seafood went in, other meats, sausage including chorizo, and ever more seasonings.

Restaurants elsewhere in Spain often put that mixed version on the menu under the name paella valenciana. Valencians hold against that only the two original Valencian recipes deserve the name.

What you think of that is taste. But it helps to know the argument is not about chauvinism but about a name: the question is not whether something is good, but whether it may be called paella valenciana.

The layer at the bottom you want

After cooking there is a layer of scorched rice at the bottom of the pan. In Valencian it is called socarrat, and contrary to what a beginner assumes it is not an accident.

The layer develops on its own when you cook over a burner or an open fire. As long as it is not burnt it counts as the best part, and Valencians eat it with pleasure. People listen for it: towards the end of the cooking time you hear a soft crackling, and that is the moment the socarrat sets.

It also means that a paella finished in an oven under a lid misses something that characterises the dish.

The biggest mistake foreigners make

Stirring. Treat paella like a risotto and keep stirring, and you get a creamy rice porridge: possibly delicious, but it is something else.

In a paella the rice is spread evenly once and then left alone. The liquid has to sink through and evaporate, the grains have to stay separate, and that crust has to be able to form underneath. Stirring makes all three impossible.

That is also why the pan is wide and shallow: a thin layer of rice with plenty of surface, so the liquid draws off rather than stewing.

Resting is part of it

When the heat goes off the dish is not finished. A paella rests five to ten minutes after cooking, covered. In those minutes the last moisture spreads evenly through the grain.

And then the Thursday

Finally a detail everyone in Spain knows and almost nobody outside it: paella has traditionally appeared on restaurant menus on Thursdays.

Various explanations for that habit circulate, and I leave them for what they are. But it is a useful test for anyone eating out in Spain. A place with paella on a Thursday is following a custom. A place advertising it on a board outside every day is aiming at visitors.