Vegan Paella Recipe

October 1 2020

Written By Joe Coulter

October 1 2020

Written By Joe Coulter

It’s all about the one pot wonders!

You have to try this Spanish rice recipe for a quick and easy midweek supper, packed with nutritious veg and full of flavour. You can really go to town on this too depending on what ingredients you’ve got kicking around in your fridge, but there are some simple steps that you do need to follow to make sure you’re on the receiving end of a pan full of happy rice.

Step one. Choose your vessel, make sure you have the right pan for the occasion – you need a pan that you can finish cooking in the oven, this is key to get that baked finish on the rice that is so defining.

Secondly use the right rice! You could buy a speciality paella rice such Spanish Bomba, but as long as you are using a good quality short grain rice, such as an Arborio risotto rice which is easy to get hold of, you won’t go far wrong – that’s what I used in the recipe above and it was delicious.

Once you’ve got the base of this recipe down you can have fun with lots of different toppings; a few suggestions could be throwing in some artichoke hearts, sautéed garlic mushrooms, roasted Mediterranean vegetables, olives or anything you like just cook separately and add as a topping to finish! I suppose if you fancied going that little bit extra, there is a certain late wife of a well known 60’s musical outfit who's company make quite good chorizo style sausages (available from all good supermarkets)…they would be pretty good on this paella too!

Ingredients

400g Aborrio risotto rice

1x Onion

3x Garlic cloves chopped

2x Celery stalks diced

2x Red pepper diced & sliced

2 x Vine tomatoes chopped

1 large pinch of saffron

1.25 litres vegetable stock

1x tsp mixed dried herbs

Salt & Pepper to taste

Fresh Parsley finely chopped

Lemon Juice

Olive Oil

Serves 4

Preheat oven to 180c / gas mark 4

Vegan | Dairy Free

Sweat down in a heavy bottomed oven proof pan; onion, celery, red pepper (reserve half a pepper for slicing), garlic, dried herbs and saffron with a generous glug of olive oil.
In a separate saucepan, heat up vegetable stock to a simmer ready to make the rice base.
Add rice to sweated veg base and cook out dry for a minute adding chopped fresh tomato at this stage and a good season of salt and pepper. Slowly add the stock stirring continuously for 5 minutes until all liquid is combined. we are going to finish the cooking in the oven.
Before transferring the dish to the oven garnish over the top of the rice the sliced red peppers, time to transfer the dish into the oven and bake for a further 10-12minutes until the rice has fully absorbed the liquid, tender to the tooth and has a pleasing baked edge to it.
Remove the rice from the oven and cover with a tea towel or lid and let rest for 5 minutes before serving – hard to resist tucking straight in but it's important as letting the rice stand now finishes the cooking process.
Serve generously with chopped parsley and a good squeeze of lemon juice, cracked black pepper or chilli flakes and any of the optional extras we talked about above.