Sunday in the Kitchen with Mark & Bruce: Brown Rice Paella
This hearty one-pot dish has enough style for entertaining, or for a week’s worth of fantastic meals.
Article By: Mark Scarbrough & Bruce Weinstein
Weekend CookingWeekday Eating
brown riceSunday in the Kitchen

Paella is not a fish dish. It’s a grain dish. It’s all about the rice that slowly softens in the heat, giving the dish its ballast and also thickening it, the starches slowly abraded into the sauce with all that stirring.
Valencia rice is the usual star. It’s highly prized in Spain — and difficult to come by in North America. So since we need to make a few adaptations, we’ve morphed the classic a bit further by using medium-grain brown rice, thereby turning this meal a bit healthier, with a better texture and some delicious nuttiness to complement the shrimp and sausage. Brown Arborio is a great option — and easy to find in larger supermarkets (or at almost any health-food store).

Paella should be made in a very wide, shallow, nearly flat pan over an open flame. Most of us don’t have wide, open flames — or such shallow pans! So we’ve adapted the recipe for North American kitchens: It's prepared stovetop in a large Dutch oven, then covered and finished in the oven. If you’ve got a cast-iron French casserole, even better. The point is to retain as much heat as possible.

But just because the pot’s going in the oven, you don’t get out of stirring. After all, Sunday is the day when you’ve got a little more time to cook. In our technique, you’ll stir the paella a bit on top of the stove, then let the oven’s ambient heat do much of the work in softening the rice and blending the flavors. The result is something like a cross between a risotto and a pilaf, a tad wetter than the standard paella, but savory and tasty, the perfect thing for a hearty Sunday-night meal.

We’ve got three recipes for the glorious leftovers, easy dishes to make during the week: paella cakes, crunchy and irresistible; paella stew, substantial and filling; and paella-stuffed peppers, a bit of elegance for a weeknight supper. All told, you’ll be in paella heaven this week. You might even want to invite some friends over — except then you won’t have leftovers for the other great meals later on.

About Brown Rice Paella
Before you start stirring the paella over the heat, pay special attention to the prep work: chopping the vegetables into similarly sized bits and browning the meat well to get the most flavor in every spoonful.

Ready to start cooking?

Sunday-night dinner
Paella
Serve it right out of the pot. As a side dish, make a simple salad with drained, canned mandarin-orange sections, drained and rinsed canned chickpeas, thinly sliced red onion, shaved radicchio and/or endive, and a sprinkling of sherry vinegar. Don’t forget a glass of red Rioja!
Tips, hints and suggestions
The pot needs to be pretty big — at least 6 quarts, maybe more. Wider pots are better than tall, thin ones because wider pots allow for more evaporation.
Saffron and smoked paprika are key flavoring ingredients. Don’t be tempted to substitute regular, mild paprika.
The broth with saffron should never boil — it will reduce by too much. However, it does need to be steamy when you add the rice.
The paella may still be a little soupy when it comes out of the oven. Rice grains absorb varying amounts of moisture, depending on how long they’ve sat on the store’s shelf, as well as the day’s humidity. Some extra liquid will be incorporated as the paella sits, covered, off the heat. But if there’s too much, set the pot over medium heat and stir for about 5 minutes to get more liquid into the rice.
A 14-ounce can of diced tomatoes is exactly 1 3/4 cups. A large fennel bulb, after trimming, will yield about 3 cups chopped; a large bell pepper, after coring and seeding, will yield about 2 cups.
Store leftover paella in a sealed container in the refrigerator for up to 4 days.