Paella is an exquisite Spanish dish that offers an incredible taste using a Paella pan with a wide and shallow surface and round sloping sides that ensures the rice is cooked in a layer evenly.
The combination of land ingredients and seafood is directly served from the pan forming a crispy golden crust called socarrat at the bottom.
Why Paella Pan Substitute?
As the name suggests, Paella Pan is only good for making a Paella… and you would surely not love to invest your money for this one dish if you get some alternative to prepare it.
Even if you buy a Paella pan, most of you will not get a lot of use, and it will just be lying on your kitchen shelf for years unless you make it often.
You might be thinking about how it would be possible to get the evenly cooked rice and the taste without a Paella Pan. Still, if you are ready to make some adjustments to the cooking time and ingredients… you can surely achieve a delicious Paella dish without actually using a Paella Pan.
Ways to prepare Paella without a Paella Pan
Few substitutes can help you save your money without compromising the taste, which is as below:
Skillet
If you don’t have a Paella pan, you can use a 13-inch or larger shallow, wide, and a heavy skillet of aluminum or stainless steel to cook Paella.
A great trick while using a skillet instead of a Paella pan is to use two skillets and divide the ingredients between them for even cooking. Prefer not to choose nonstick pans as they make bland paellas and cast iron skillets to retain too much heat.
Wok
You might have heard from people that Wok can’t be used for Paellas, which is not true. The paella pan is flat and large that offers quick cooking because of increased surface, and the same case is with a Wok.
A slopped lip on Wok allows you to set aside the cooked food, which lets you cook the seafood first like shrimp, chicken, sausage, and set it aside. Then cook vegetables and lastly add rice in Wok to achieve a delicious Paella.
Dutch Ovens
You can also use a Dutch oven, which would give you nicely cooked rice with great flavors… but it is hard to get a good socarrat. The heavy bottom of the Dutch oven allows a great layer of toasted rice at the bottom.
A cast-iron Cocotte often is mistaken with a round Dutch oven, can actually help you get the crispy bottom for Paella. Avoid stirring the mixture while you are cooking the dish for getting the bottom crust.
Hotel Pan
If you have to cook large quantities of the dish and are looking for a Paella pan substitute, hotel pans are a very convenient option.
When cooking Paella in a hotel pan, cook the rice separately and the vegetables and other ingredients separately and then toss it together at the end. A flat bottom pan is always better than a round one.
Shallow Saute Pan
An impressive looking Paella with nice flavors can be achieved using a 4 quart or larger shallow saute pan. Please don’t cover the Paella while cooking, but you can cover it after taking out of the oven to keep your food warm.
About 3 inches deep and a wide pan is a great shape for cooking Paella. If your saute pan has a long handle and helper handle on the other side, it is a great advantage.
Using Frying Pan
You can use a 10-inch or longer frying pan, but to get the exact crispy texture of the rice, makes sure not to overcrowd your pan. Using a frying pan, you can make any kind of Paella, including vegetable paella and seafood paella.
Use the right ingredients to make it actual Paella, i.e., round rice, high-quality saffron, and extra virgin olive oil. Remove the vegetables or seafood after browning and set them aside.
After 5-6 minutes of adding rice, lower the fire to medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes and then again heat it for 4 to 5 minutes to achieve socarrat.
Rice Cooker and Shallow Pan Combo
Cook rice separately in a rice cooker and saute your other ingredients in a shallow and wide pan and set aside.
Add rice and vegetables, and when they are fully fluffed, add your seafood and a bit of water and let it stand on medium heat for a while to achieve rice toasting on the bottom.
Conclusion
While using these substitutes for making a Paella prefer to cook it uncovered as the dish is meant to be cooked without a lid to evaporate moisture offering soggy and crispy rice.
Things are not so difficult if you have a firm desire to achieve something lovely and special… and these substitutes can offer great help without the need to buy a special pan.
Also Read:
I used my Panella Pan a lot when l didn’t have my Always Pan. Which l just got. I used it for sauteeing everything. The food tastes incredible but problem is if you use only oil the top part of the food hardly gets cooked at the top part of the pan. Thats why l almost always used a lid.