Culinary World Tour: Spain (Grilled Paella)

In an effort to experience the flavors and cooking styles that ever corner of the Earth has to offer, we've embarked on the "Culinary World Tour," which lets us taste the cuisine of every nation all from the comfort of our own home. If you missed the previous entries in our world tour, check them out using these links:

England: Yorkshire Pudding
Ireland: Shepherd's Pie
Iceland: Lamb Pie With Rye Crust
Greenland: Suaasat
Canada: Poutine
Mexico: Posole

Now the world tour has hit Spain, which has an incredibly versatile range of traditional dishes for us to choose from. Eventually we settled on paella: a classic Spanish rice dish, but we're putting a little twist on it by heading outside and cooking it on the grill!

To make this paella, you'll need:

•    2 cups chicken stock
•    5 – 6 on the vine tomatoes
•    1 - 2 big heaping handfuls of fresh green beans
•    2 bell peppers of your preferred variety – red and green work great
•    1 ½ cups uncooked parboiled rice
•    5 chicken drumsticks
•    2 tbsp. minced garlic
•    2 tbsp. olive oil
•    Seasonings – saffron threads, rosemary, paprika, sea salt, pepper

This is both an indoor and outdoor meal, with preparation taking place both on the counter and stovetop and outside on the grill. To get started, mix together a few teaspoons of rosemary and about 15 or so threads of saffron (both of these will add an amazing aromatic component when cooking out on the grill later) with a few pinches of salt, pepper, and paprika.

Pour the seasoning mixture into the rice and mix together with a spoon, then transfer it all to a container to take outside (we used plastic tupperware containers with the lids on for easy transporting).

Paella is a very versatile dish, as there are many different meat and vegetable combinations out there. One of the most common protein combos used in paella is shrimp and sausage. If you wanted a really authentically rustic Valencian flavor, you could even go all out and use snails and rabbit!

We decided to go a more simple route for our first attempt at paella, using chicken drumsticks. Here I've seasoned them lightly with salt and rosemary.

One interesting aspect of paella that got us outside our comfort zone was how it typically uses grated tomatoes. We'd never even considered grating tomatoes before - always instead going the traditional route of slicing, dicing, etc. To grate tomatoes, first cut them in half to expose the insides.

Next you'll want to scoop out as much of the seeds as possible so you're just left with the tomato flesh.

Press the flesh side of the tomato against the grater (the skin side should be facing away from the grater) and go to town like you would with a block of cheese.

Keep grating until all the flesh is inside the grater and you're left with just the skin.

Now you can just simply discard the leftover skin, since it won't be used in the dish. With no skin and no seeds you've removed all the components of a tomato that can give a bitter flavor when cooking for extended lengths of time.

Here's the grated flesh of 6 on-the-vine tomatoes in a tupperware container ready to go. Next, chop up the bell peppers and snap the ends of the green beans and take everything but the stock outside (that needs to cook inside, which we'll explain in a bit).

For more of a rustic feel, we used wood instead of standard charcoal, which has a more potent scent and will impart a better smoke flavor. Here we've got the drumsticks cooking over a roaring fire on an oven safe pan.

After the skin starts to get crispy on all sides, spoon in the olive oil, garlic, chopped bell peppers, and green beans.

Give the vegetables a few minutes to soften and infuse with garlic flavor, then add in the grated tomatoes.

Next we're going to throw in the uncooked, seasoned rice. Remember that stock we mentioned earlier? We've had it cooking on the stovetop inside the whole time so it would be boiling.

Because the rice won't cook as long as if you were say cooking on the stovetop or in a rice cooker, we need the stock to be immediately boiling hot to ensure the rice cooks through.

Here we're pouring the hot stock into the pan on the grill. Of course we recommend using homemade stock, but store-bought works as well.

Now close the grill lid and let the rice cook while soaking up the stock for 20 - 25 minutes. The rice should be firm but not hard.

Using some oven mitts and careful maneuvering, we bring the whole pan inside once the rice has finished cooking.

And here's our finished product: an amazingly flavorful drumstick on a bed of rice and vegetables!

Let's dig in!

This was of course just one of many wonderful dishes from Spain, and we're looking forward to trying more in the future.

This one was an astounding success that is really the whole package: hearty, delicious, and with an aroma to die for. Adding in the outdoor grilling element just made it more fun and great way to spend an afternoon with friends and family.

Stay tuned, as the culinary world tour will continue on throughout Europe soon!