Spanish Seafood Paella with Jasmin Scented Rice

When I find fresh Seafood, the first word that comes to my mind is “Paella!”. This dish brings back childhood memories, and after all these years it’s still one of those dishes that I find exciting to cook and delicious to eat.

A Paella is a baked (or charcoal simmered) rice dish typical of Spain. The basic Paella would be a white rice simmered in saffron infused stock, sauteed onions and peppers. From this versatile base people started coming up with all sorts of different variations. You can add anything from chicken wings to the classic mixture of seafood to this dish. Maybe that’s why after all these years I still find the Paella an exciting dish to prepare. You can always add different ingredients to it.

In this recipe I will be using fresh seafood as the main flavouring ingredients. I will also be using Jasmine rice to add an exotic scent to this dish. I was out of White Rice one day, and decided to use Jasmin Rice instead. To my surprise, it turned out to be a fantastic combination of scents and flavour. I hope you will agree with me!

Make sure that you have a roasting pan with a lid that you can use, both, on the stove and in the oven.

NOTE: When buying Shrimp, you will often see numbers such as 8/12, 16/20, 31/40, etc writen on the package. That means “Shrimp Per Pound”. So the smaller the number, the bigger the shrimp. For example, in a package of 8/12 shrimp, it would only take 8 to 12 shrimp to make a pound. Whereas it would take 31 to 40 Shrimp to make up a pound in a bag of smaller Shrimp.