I love a paella but I do not love seafood. While my kids will eat fish & chips and panko prawn nigiri (tail and all) as a favourite Japanese snack, we do not cook a lot of seafood at home. I have experimented with a few paella recipes and included seafood and just committed myself to eat around the prawns. Lucky for me the kids did not like the frozen prawns I bought and I was let off the hook when it comes to a seafood paella!
Paella is a dish that can sit of the stove without too much need for stirring but I find that many hands make light work and if you have a helper to stir the pot while you prep the ingredients its a great way for the family to get involved in cooking dinner. This meal takes about 40min from starting prep work to serving and makes 5 decent size serves (that’s 4 for dinner and one left over for lunches).
ingredients
1 stick of celery
1 medium carrot
1 small brown onion
2 cloves of garlic
2 Tablespoon olive oil
1 small red capsicum (deseeded and diced)
600g of diced chicken (I used two chicken breasts)
100g chorizo sausage*
1 Tablespoon smoked paprika
1 chicken stock cube
1/3 cup of tomato passata
300g paella rice (if you can not find a paella rice Arborio rice works just as well)
750ml boiling water
100g frozen peas
1 lemon
directions
1. Finely dice celery, carrot, onion and garlic.
2. Heat oil in large pan (I use a 32cm stone sauté pan with lid) and add diced ingredients.
3. While the diced ingredients are cooking, chop chicken breast into bite sized pieces. Once onions are transparent add chicken to the pan.
4. Roughly chop chorizo and dice capsicum. Add chorizo, capsicum and paprika to pan and stir through.
5. Add rice, crumbled stock cube and tomato passata to pot and mix thoroughly.
6. Boil kettle while allowing rice to cook in the pot. Add boiling water, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Continue to stir the rice to ensure it does not stick to the bottom of a pan. If require add another 100ml of water towards end of cooking.
7. Add frozen peas and continue to cook for another 5 minutes.
8. Serve with a lemon wedge with salt and pepper to taste.
utensils
You will be looking at washing up at least two chopping boards, one knife, prep bowl, measuring jug, measuring spoon, 1/3 cup measure, wooden spoon and a large pot with lid.
tips
*if your family likes ‘chili meat’ as much as mine double the chorizo to 200g
One of my children has an issue with cooked carrots. I used to leave the carrot chunks large so that he could remove them from his dinner but now I cut them small and just remind him its part of the dinner and if he wants more ‘chili meat’ he needs to eat them.
If you are looking for other rice based dish to make in the Thermomix a favourite of mine is beef risotto from Annoyed Thyroid.
