| Level: | Intermediate |
| Total: | 2 hr 50 min |
| Prep: | 50 min |
| Cook: | 2 hr |
| Yield: | 4-6 servings |
Ingredients
- 1 pound chicken wings
- 1 cup chopped Spanish onion
- 1/2 cup sliced celery
- 1/2 cup sliced carrot
- 2 fresh bay leaves
- 6 sprigs thyme
- 12 black peppercorns
- 3 juniper berries
- 1 tablespoon saffron threads
- 2 Spanish onions (1 quartered, 1 thinly sliced)
- 1 fresh bay leaf
- 2 stalks celery, sliced
- 1 1/2 pounds skin-on, boneless chicken thighs, fat trimmed
- 1/2 cup ketchup
- 2 tablespoons smoked Spanish paprika
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 2 large red bell peppers, thinly sliced
- 2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
- Kosher salt
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 1/2 cup Spanish chorizo, thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup diced Spanish onion
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 1 1/4 cups Calasparra rice (or other paella rice)
- 1/4 cup fresh or frozen peas (thawed if frozen)
- 2 tablespoons thinly sliced piquillo peppers
- 1/4 cup chopped pitted kalamata or black olives
- Kosher salt
- 1/4 cup tomato paste
Instructions
- Make the stock: Combine the chicken wings, onion, celery, carrot, bay leaves, thyme, peppercorns and juniper berries in a large pot and add water to cover. Bring to a simmer over medium low to medium heat; simmer, uncovered, 45 minutes. Add the saffron and simmer 15 more minutes. Strain the stock: Pour the stock through a fine strainer; discard the solids. (If not using immediately, let cool, then cover and refrigerate up to 3 days or freeze up to 3 months.)
- Poach the chicken: Bring 8 cups water, the quartered onion, bay leaf and celery to a simmer in a large pot over medium heat. Add the chicken thighs and gently poach until just tender, about 12 minutes.
- Shred the meat: Remove the chicken from the pot using tongs and reserve the poaching liquid. Let the chicken cool slightly, then discard the skin and shred the meat. Make the sauce: the tomato paste, ketchup and paprika in a blender. Strain 2 cups of the reserved poaching liquid; add the liquid to the blender and puree until smooth.
- Finish the chicken: Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the sliced onion, bell peppers and garlic and cook until translucent, 10 to 12 minutes. Add the pureed sauce and cook, stirring, until the sauce thickens, 8 to 10 minutes. Add the shredded chicken and stir to coat with the sauce. Season with salt and keep warm.
- Make the paella: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Heat the olive oil in a paella pan or large ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chorizo and cook until the fat renders, about 5 minutes. Add the onion and garlic and cook until the onion is translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the rice and stir to lightly coat with the oil. Stir in the peas, piquillo peppers, olives, 2 cups chicken mixture and 2 1/4 cups saffron chicken stock. Season with salt. Bake and serve: Cover the paella pan or skillet tightly with foil and bake until the liquid is completely absorbed, 20 to 22 minutes. Remove from the oven and let rest, covered, 5 minutes. Serve in the pan. Photograph by Andrew Sabin
Nutrition Facts
| Serving Size | 1 of 6 servings |
| Calories | 741 |
| Total Fat | 39 g |
| Saturated Fat | 10 g |
| Carbohydrates | 58 g |
| Dietary Fiber | 6 g |
| Sugar | 12 g |
| Protein | 39 g |
| Cholesterol | 199 mg |
| Sodium | 1071 mg |
Reviews
Bad! Just bad!
Recipe must not have been tested. I made this and couldn’t believe how long it took to prep all the vegetables and cook the various stages. 50 minutes? More like 2 hours of hands-on time. The ingredients aren’t sized correctly, either. Look out for having a lot of extra “chicken mixture.” It calls for 2 cups at the end but you’ll have 4 cups of it. This leads to problems with getting the liquids balanced with the rice. It was tasty but not worth the effort and aggravation.
The 2 1/2 cups of saffron has to be a mistake!! I would imagine it’s teaspoons or tablespoons. I was sure it would be mentioned in one of the other reviews. I gave it a 4 rating even though I haven’t made it yet, but it sounds delicious.
Love it, but yes, lobster tails and shrimp would make it even more heavenly!
Finding rice was difficult, but I found a medium grain rice at my local hispanic grocery store and it worked. This dish was very good, although a bit heavy on the tomato flavor. I browned some large fresh Louisiana shrimp in olive oil and added them at the very end. I did not get the crust that I’ve heard is so key to paella; maybe you need to grill the paella to get the crust. It seemed like a very flavorful jambalaya instead of a crusted rice paella.
New Years Eve party entree. I wish they gave a sub suggestion for Calasparra rice -even Whole Foods in nyc didn’t have this ingredient, so I used Aborio instead. I also added a dozen shrimp and 2 lobster tails for the special evening party – left out the piquillo peppers and olives. The rice needed more cooking time but the flavors were truly authentic and my friends all mmm’d loved it.
Amazing! I’ve made this recipe several times now for a variety of people and every time I receive loads of compliments. A must try! I can’t tolerate garlic, so I leave it out and honestly it doesn’t feel like anything is missing.
Fantastic dish. The only way I varied was that I used linguica Portuguese sausage as I could not find chorizo with the skin on (only the kind you can squeeze out of uncookable covering. In retrospect, I would have just used ground chorizo because the linguica did not give off enough oil. The homemade chicken stock I think is the trick, infused with saffron. Overall, this is a complex-tasting dish with the flavors all melding very nicely together. One more thing – as written, the recipe yields enough stock and chicken-chorizo mixture to make two batches of paella, but the actual final step is only enough for one. So I froze the chicken stock and chorizo mixture for next time.