Every country has a dish that unites its people. Or, just as often, divides them. In Spain, that dish is paella. Get us talking about our paellas, or arroces, as they are often called, and you may get the sense that there are more paella recipes than there are stars in the sky. And to a certain extent, you’d be right—the combinations of foods that can make up paella are endless. But the best paellas aren’t merely the product of a good recipe, though that certainly helps. No, paella perfection comes about when the person who is cooking it has an almost tangible affection for the dish itself, for the process of making it, and for the people who will be eating it.

I’ll pass along a handful of paella traditions here in the hope that some of my own passion for the dish rubs off on you, but mostly what I’m doing is laying a foundation of techniques that you can apply to any paella (pah-ay-yah) recipe you come across or invent.

Paella isn’t difficult to make, but it’s amazing how often it gets bungled in restaurants (not my own, of course). The most common offense is to load up the pan with excessive ingredients. These overwrought rice dishes—I can’t even bear to call them paellas—may look impressive on the table but more often than not, they disappoint the palate. Why? Because they suffer from the fatal flaw of many paellas: their rice has been smothered. Meat, seafood, and vegetables justify their place in the pan as flavor lenders for the single most important ingredient of every paella: the rice. Remember that fact and you’re well on your way. You’ll know you’ve done it right when you and your friends are pushing aside the chicken, the green beans, even the artichokes, just to get another forkful of that scrumptiously addictive rice.

Great paella rests on five pillars

From my mother, Carmen, I’ve learned how to make paella by simply following my intuition. However, the scholar in me seeks hard data, so I’ve come up with five principle elements that determine the nature of the paella. They are: the rice, the pan, the distribution of heat, the sofrito, and the liquid.

The rice should be medium grain.Spanish rice is rounded and short; it absorbs liquid very well, and it stays relatively firm during cooking. Those qualities make it ideal for paella, where the rice grains absorb flavor from the liquid; the rice should be dry and separate when done, not creamy like risotto. The most appreciated variety of Spanish rice is bomba, which can be ordered by mail in the U.S., but you’ll also have success with the widely available medium-grain rice sold by Goya. Arborio is an acceptable substitute; long-grain rices, however, are not.

A true paella pan is wide, round, and shallow and has splayed sides.它有两个循环处理,可能会略有下降the middle so the oil can pool there for the preliminary sautéing. The shape of the pan, which is called either a paella or paellera (pah-ay-yair-ah), helps to ensure that the rice cooks in a thin layer. The Valencians say that the cooked rice should be only as thick asun ditet, or the width of a small finger (about 1/2 inch). The key is to maximize the amount of rice touching the bottom of the pan because, as you’ll see, that’s where the flavor lives. For that reason, paella pans grow in diameter rather than in height. A 14-inch paella pan withun ditetof rice serves two to four people; an 18-inch pan serves six to eight.

A good paella pan is made of a very thin, conductive metal, usually plain or enameled steel. I’ve recently seen quite a few objects masquerading as paella pans. For example, those beautiful heavy and expensive copper or stainless-steel pans that some stores market as paella pans are actually better suited to braising than to making paella. And any pan that’s sold with a lid is a dead-giveaway impostor: except for the final resting period, paella is cooked uncovered. Paella pans can sometimes be found in Latin American or Hispanic markets. Or order them fromThe Spanish Table, which carries paella pans in a range of sizes, along with bomba rice and many other Spanish products.

If you don’t have a paella pan, the alternative is to use a skillet. A 13-inch or larger stainless-steel or aluminum skillet will work; otherwise, use two medium skillets (which is a little trickier logistically), dividing the ingredients between them. Avoid cast-iron skillets (they retain too much heat) and nonstick pans (they produce bland paellas).

Try to find a heat source that can accommodate the whole paella pan.Depending on the configuration of your burners, you’ll need to straddle the pan over two burners or set it on your largest burner. Either way, you’ll have to move and rotate the pan to distribute the heat. Or you can cook the paella outdoors on a large gas or charcoal grill, or even over a wood fire, which is how it’s done at paella competitions in Spain (an annual ritual in many villages).

A sauté of aromatics, called the sofrito, provides the flavor base.The components of the sofrito vary by region. In the recipe here, I’m using tomato, onion, and garlic. Some cooks use paprika, herbs, or a dried sweet red pepper called ñora. The technique is simple: sauté the vegetables over medium heat until they soften and the flavors meld, and the water from the tomato has evaporated. This mixture should be thick enough to hold its shape in a spoon.

A flavorful liquid cooks the rice, while imbuing it with additional character.If you don’t have a homemade stock on hand, improvise one with the ingredients in the paella. For paella with shrimp, for example, simmer the shells in salted water for a quick, flavorful stock. If you use canned stock, choose a low-salt one. You can also use water, as many home cooks do in Spain. Almost every paella recipe calls for the liquid to be infused with saffron, which contributes color as well as a subtle background flavor to the rice.

Tradition aside, you’re allowed to be creative

Purists will tell you that the original Valencian paella contained chicken or rabbit, green beans, snails, and fresh lima beans, and that any other combination is correctly called arroz en paella (rice in a paella pan). These semantic distinctions don’t interest me. I think that if the combination of ingredients works and you stay true to the five principles above, it’s paella.

Once you’re comfortable with the technique of making paella, you can devise your own recipe according to what’s good and fresh in your market. For some of my favorite combinations, see the Variations box below.

Paella Variations

There’s no limit to the ingredients that can be used in a paella. Seafood, ham, vegetables, fruits, nuts–they’ve all found their way into the paella pan. Here are some combinations that give the rice a wonderful flavor. The technique is always the same: sauté the ingredients, make the sofrito, stir in the rice, and add the saffron-infused liquid.

Seafood paella.Sauté very briefly shrimp, scallops, and calamari (cut in rings), returning the seafood to the rice toward the end of cooking. Bury scrubbed clams or mussels in the broth while the rice cooks. Serve with alioli (the Spanish version of aïoli): smash garlic and salt to a paste in a mortar and add olive oil and lemon juice to taste.

Vegetable paella.炒青椒、青豆、菜花和artichokes; make a sofrito of tomato and parsley. Add shelled fava beans with the rice.

Sausage and chickpea paella.Try using chorizo sausage, red peppers, a whole head of garlic, and cooked chickpeas (use the chickpea cooking liquid for stock, or combine it with a meat stock). Make a sofrito of garlic, tomato, and paprika and add the chickpeas with the rice.

If you want to simplify cleanup, sauté all the ingredients consecutively in the paella pan, but if you want to hurry things along, you can use a few pans simultaneously (brown the chicken in the paella pan while the artichokes and green beans are cooking in a skillet, for example). All the sautéing, including the sofrito, can be done up to several hours in advance.

Cook the rice al dente

Adding the liquid.When you add the stock to the pan, it should boil briskly for the first several minutes, until the rice starts to peek above the surface. Then you’ll lower the heat so the liquid simmers gently. During this entire time, move the pan around as much as you want to even out the heat, but don’t stir the rice. If the liquid seems to be boiling off too quickly, you may need to add a little more, so have some hot water or more stock handy on another burner.

Gently toast the bottom

Gauging doneness.The rice should be al dente, not mushy—break apart a grain and you’ll see a pin-size white dot in the center. This should take about 20 minutes. If the pan has been set over two burners, I find that it’s helpful to cover the pan with foil for the last two minutes of cooking just to be sure the rice cooks evenly. Another solution is to put the paella pan, uncovered, in a heated 425°F oven for the last 10 minutes of cooking.

Getting the socarrat.Socarrat (soh-kah-raht, from the verb socarrar, which means to toast lightly) is the caramelized crust of rice that sometimes sticks to the bottom of the pan. It is the prize in a well-made paella. To get some, increase the heat at the end of cooking, paying close attention to the sound of the rice (it crackles) and the smell (toasty but not burned). After one or two minutes, poke under the foil with a spoon; if you feel just a touch of bumpy resistance on the bottom of the pan, you’ve got socarrat.

The resting period.When the liquid is absorbed, the rice is done, and the socarrat achieved, the paella needs some time alone to finish cooking and round out its flavors. Cover the pan with a clean towel or foil (if you haven’t already done so) and let it rest off the heat for five to ten minutes.

Serving.Traditionally, paella is eaten directly from the pan. Everyone finds a place around the pan (a circular or square table is ideal) and starts eating from the perimeter of the pan and working toward the center. If this communal style doesn’t appeal to you, let people spoon the paella onto their own plates.

As a preface to the paella, I like to offer a mixture of grilled onions, tomatoes, and peppers, called escalibada, on toasted bread. To accompany the rice, you need nothing more than lemon wedges, a lightly dressed salad, wine, and lots of family and friends.