Valencia – home of the paella

Valencia stands out in Mediterranean cuisine with its preference for rice. Centuries of Moorish rule created a tradition of cultivating both rice and saffron. Together they form the basis for the region’s most famous dish and an important part of the local identity – paella.
“Every Sunday family and friends gather around a paella and spend the day cooking, eating and talking,” says Guillermo Navarro, a co-founder of the organization “Wikipaella” that promotes authentic paella and publishes a restaurant guide. 

While visitors may prefer to enjoy a paella with fresh seafood in the sunset at a restaurant by the beach, that’s not how locals do it. A real paella valenciana doesn’t contain anything that can swim and should only be eaten as a lunch. 

A Spanish lunch, that is, meaning sometime between midday and 4pm. 
“The ten ingredients we use to make paella valenciana, are oil, tomato, chicken, rabbit, green beans, butter beans, salt, water, rice and saffron,” Navarro explains.

“Mar y montaña” should never be mixed – meaning you should never combine fish from “el mar” with meat from “la montaña.”

In practice, however, Valencians are open-minded when it comes to their beloved paella.

“Each region combines the ingredients they have access to. That’s why we refer to it as the classic paella,” Navarro says.

Paella appears to be such an easy dish. Just rice, vegetables and meat thrown into a large frying pan, right? Well, think again. 
“It’s difficult because you have to make three things in the same pan. First a vegetable and meat stir fry, then the broth in the same utensil and finally you add the rice to cook it all together,” says Navarro who also initiated a campaign to create the world’s first paella emoji. 

The crust in the bottom of the pan, the socorrat, must be perfect, and the paella should be preferably be cooked over an open fire, a leña, which adds an extra “secret” ingredient.
 “What differentiates a good paella from an excellent one is the firewood. That unique smoky aroma provides smell, taste and color,” says Navarro, who recommends everyone to come to his hometown for a first-hand paella experience.

“And above all, for the unique pleasure of eating it directly from the pan among friends, looking at the sea.”

Here are 6 great Paella restaurants: