Are you a rice lover, and do you want to try something creative and delicious out of rice? Well, we are in the same boat.
In this article, our staple food, which is the rice, would turn into a world-class dish that you would surely love more. Your plain steamed and fried rice would be a Chicken Paella.
It is a combination of rice, chicken, and other ingredients and cooked in a wide pan. You could cook it in many ways, and there are tons of variations you could discover and try to recreate the dish.
Is it interesting? Are you wondering what dish we are featuring? If that is so, take your pen and notes as you keep discovering these Filipino rice recipes that you could serve as a restaurant-quality dish.
What is Chicken Paella
Chicken Paella is a Filipino version of Paella Valencia. It has the same ingredients and ways to cook. Not surprisingly, even the taste of this dish is closely similar to the Spanish version.
To create this wonderful dish, you have to saute all the meat, whether pork, chicken, sausage, or seafood and seasoned it with salt and ground pepper.
Afterward, you have to cook all the vegetables you want to put in the featured Paella dish until soft. Then boiled it to create a broth that you would use to put in the rice. You have to use a paella, also known as a pan, to cook the recipes to perfection.
This authentic dish is not easy to create but worth it to try and serve with your family. The taste of the recipes would not disappoint you.
Ways to Cook Chicken Paella
Chicken Paella has many ways to cook. These methods help you to pull off the recipes easier than you expected.
Pressure Cooker
This cooking method is different from the stove because it requires a pressure cooker to cook the Paella dish. You have to use it for cooking the recipes perfectly. In this method, you have to set the heat temperature to 212 degrees Fahrenheit and then place all the ingredients that you would use for the dish inside the pressure cooker and let it cook.
Stovetop
You have to use a wide pan and put it above the burner when choosing this cooking method. But among all those ways of cooking Paella, this method is the easiest and perfect. It is the traditional technique of cooking the featured recipes.
Smoked Tomato Paella Recipes
Smoking is another way of cooking the dish by exposing it to smoke from smoldering or burning material, especially woods. It is the perfect way to preserve the flavor of the featured dish. You could also use four ways in smoking the Paella dish: the cold, warm, hot, and through employing liquid smoke. All of these ways are making the dish stand out.
Baked Paella with Aioli
Baked Paella is another suitable way of cooking the dish. You have to preheat the oven up to 325 degrees Fahrenheit to cook the Paella perfectly. Before cooking it in the oven, you have to saute and pan-fry all the ingredients you would put in the Paella. Afterward, you could mix it with the rice and place it inside the oven.
Skillet Paella
This skillet method is the most popular way of cooking in creating the Paella dish. You would use a skillet pan in this method of cooking. Skillet is non-sticky and perfect for cooking the rice along with other ingredients. Skillet is the most commonly used cooking equipment.
Slow-Cooker Paella
However, when cooking using a slow cooker, you could expect that it takes a longer time to cook than all the other cooking methods. But you could expect that the dish is already perfect and cooked according to your desired cook, not surprisingly, why some people used this cooking method.
Other Easy and Delicious Food Variants of these Recipes
Paella is a unique and wonderful dish that contains flavors that you could experiment with and playoff to recreate other superb and easy versions. So, we listed a few of those easy variations.
With Sausage Recipes
In this easy version of Chicken Paella, you have to put sausage to add a more meaty flavor to the featured dish. Since chicken is a bit bland compared to pork or sausages, it is the right ingredient to pair up with chicken. Sausage is one of the ingredients you would love to work with within your kitchen and add to your dish because of the rich flavors it offers.
Spicy Chicken Paella Recipes
In this easy version of the Paella dish, you may put chili flakes or chili itself to the dish. It is perfect for those people who enjoy eating spicy dishes. The spiciness of the dish elevated it and made it more appealing to eat and serve.
You could marinate the chicken and put chili flakes on the marinade to give a spicy flavor to the chicken. Or you could add chili paste to the Paella dish.
Chicken and Chorizo Paella Recipes
Another easy variation of Chicken Paella is the Chicken and Chorizo Paella, making a hearty and delicious dish to serve with your family. You could put chorizo along with the other ingredients. It gives a good flavor to the dish.
Chorizo is a pork sausage used as an ingredient to add more flavor to other recipes, like its purpose in this featured Paella dish.
Seafood-and-Chicken with Chorizo Paella Recipes
It is one of the most popular combinations of meat used to create a Paella dish. It is the most classic dish loaded with tons of flavor. You could use clams, mussels, and shrimp along with the chicken, sausage, chorizo, and rice. It is much more expensive than other variations since the ingredients are all expensive ingredients in the market.
With squid and beans Recipes
Paella's variant is the great version for those who want to try it but you are on a diet. This black rice Paella is an incredible dish with a great appearance to offer. The squid's ink serves as the dish's coloring agent, and the touch of green color is from the beans, which is ideal and perfect for recreating.
Paella with French Green Beans Recipes
In this variation of the Paella dish, you could use french green beans to the dish instead of American beans. It is a thinner version of green beans that you usually used in some of the recipes you cooked with beans.
Chicken and Langoustine paella Recipes
Chicken and Langoustine Paella is an accessible version of the featured dish you would use, Langoustine, which is very similar to crayfish's appearance. It has a light shade of orange, and it does not change color when you cook it.
This ingredient is perfect for the dish since it has no strong flavor. So, this ingredient would not overpower the dish. It offers more meat than others.
Chorizo Paella with Potatoes Recipes
One of the great ingredients to put in the Paella is the potatoes. Its mildly sweet and slightly bland flavors absorb the Paella seasoning and flavors, making it more tasty and delicious. Potatoes are a versatile ingredient to use in every dish, especially in Paella. There's no doubt that it contributes good texture to the dish.
Chicken and Shrimp Paella Recipes
Like the seafood Paella, shrimp is one of the ingredients added to the dish. But having the shrimp particularly in the dish gives more bold flavors and taste. It is a great partner with chicken meat. Both of them have a sweet taste, which makes this version stand out.
Trivia
Paella or la Paella is the name not of the dish but the cooking pan. It comes from the Valencian old term and roots in "Patella", a Latin word which means pan.
This dish is not a staple food in Spain. They usually prepare it during weekends and holidays to serve in the large dining areas or beaches where the family gathers or even at the mountain sites' picnic.
There is also a Paella competition all over Spain, and a giant Paella is the center of many feasts.
Tips for Cooking Bringhe Filipino Recipes
Here are easy tips that you could follow to recreate the dish better. Take some notes and check them out.
- When you are about to use washed rice, make sure that you drain it very well.
- Combine the right ingredient to make it tastier and delicious.
- Boneless parts of the chicken are perfect to use for the dish.
- You could use either turmeric powder or fresh turmeric to add more color to the featured dish.
- When the rice is already tender, transfer it to a wide pan and cover it with banana leaves. Start cooking it again in low to medium heat to create a crust on it.
- Put a generous amount of seasonings to the featured rice dish.
- Never overcook the rice for the dish.
Troubleshooting when cooking these Filipino Recipes
Here are a few valuable ideas that would help you save your dish if you make mistakes while cooking it.
- You could put banana leaves on the rice to absorb the liquid to avoid mushy rice.
- Add more seasoning to the dish if it tastes plain and bland.
- To add a more appealing color and flavor to the dish, put some turmeric in the dish to attain a good appearance.
Best Serve With
Paella is not good to serve without other recipes that would complement it. Thus, we lookout for some recipes that you would try to eat along with the featured dish.
- Pinakbet - is one of the recipes that fit the featured dish's preference to complement its taste.
- Ginisang munggo is another vegetable dish sauteed with ingredients that fit the featured rice dish's authentic taste.
- Chopsuey - is a Filipino vegetable cuisine that is perfectly suitable for the dish's authentic flavor and taste.
- Ginisang sayote- is a vegetable sauteed dish that matches the featured dish's flavor.
- Tofu Sarciado - is one of the incredible tomato recipes perfect with the Chicken Paella recipes.
- Tortang Dilis- is a suitable dish that compliments the Paella dish featured here.
- Pineapple juice - is another great beverage to pair up with the featured Paella dish.
- Pork Belly Chicharron is an amazing dish that matches the featured recipes' taste and flavor.
- Drop soup- is one of the recipes perfect for serving as an appetizer and the featured Paella recipes.
- Crab and corn soup is another comfort soup dish perfectly eaten with the featured rice recipes.
- Sausage gravy is one of the perfect creamy gravy recipes to pair up with the Paella recipes featured here.
- Fish Fillet - is a fish dish that matches the Paella recipes' taste and flavor.
- Mango Graham Cake - is another great dessert that is perfect to compliment the Paella recipes.
- Banana Pudding - is one of the great dessert recipes you would love to partner with the Paella recipes.
- Coke and Sprite- are types of beverages perfect for the featured recipes.
- Buko Pandan - is an all-time favorite dessert perfectly served with the Paella recipes.
Minatamis na saging - is the dessert perfectly served along with the Paella recipes.
Conclusion
Chicken Paella is very hard to recreate and time-consuming for most cooks because of all the ingredients you need to prepare. But all your hard work and effort would be worth it and paid off once you recreate the recipes already.
It has a vast number of flavors, including umami flavor, which makes the recipes exceptional. It contains different spices and seasonings that would kick your taste buds when you taste it.
You would surely love this dish once you try to elevate it and recreate it to serve with your family. It is a very humble dish yet overflowing with mouth-watering flavors that would extremely make you proud when you finally pull this dish off and serve.
We would guide you with all the ideas and details that we searched for, so don't worry that you may not pull the recipes off because we would surely help you!
You may visit our website, www.eatlikepinoy.com, for more delicate recipes to try, like the Chicken Paella and many more. Together, let's discover more about the wonderful delicacies and recipes of Filipino dishes.
Recipe
Best Chicken Paella Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 kg Chicken breast
- 2 teaspoon Salt
- 2 cloves Garlic crushed into pieces
- ¼ cup Olive oil
- 2 teaspoon Paprika
- 5 cups Water
- 2 pcs Onion medium
- 1 ½ cup Green peas
- 1 teaspoon Ground black pepper
- 1 pc Green pepper medium and diced small
- 2 cups Rice uncooked
- 2 large Tomatoes
- ¼ teaspoon Saffron
- ½ kg Clams
- ½ kg Shrimp
- 3 tablespoon Cheese
- 2 pcs Lemon
- 1 bunch Parsley
Instructions
- In a pot, pour 5 cups of water and boil the chicken, season it with ½ teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon ground black pepper. Cook for 20 minutes.
- After 20 minutes, remove the chicken from the pot and set aside the chicken stock.
- Shred the boiled chicken into not so small pieces.
- In another pot, boil clams for 5 minutes or until clam shells opened. Set aside.
- Put the shrimp in a pan, and season it with salt. Cover and cook for 10 minutes over medium-low heat without water.
- After 10 minutes, add ½ teaspoon olive oil, and mix it for 5 minutes.
- After 5 minutes, let it cool and shred the shrimp except for the tail. Set aside all the shrimp tails.
- In a large skillet, saute garlic until golden brown then add onion, bell pepper. Mix for 5 minutes or until softened.
- Now add paprika, ground black pepper, tomatoes, and green peas. Mix then pour the chicken stock into the large skillet.
- Bring to boil then add rice, season it with salt and saffron. Bring to boil and cover. Cook until rice grains are soft already.
- Now add half of the clams and shredded shrimp. Mix well.
- Transfer your dish into a large bowl then add the remaining clams and shrimp tails.
- Sprinkle it with parsley on top. Serve hot and enjoy!
