Spanish Vegan Paella

Troy and I regularly visit friends for a group dinner and there’s always a theme! Recently, the theme was Spanish and I had no idea what to make! So, it ended up being paella! Paella has never been a dish I’ve reached for, and there’s no particular reason! However, this one turned out to be a real crowd pleaser!

I have some caveats to this one though, worth noting! The nature of this dish is quite acidic with the grains and flavours, and this is why I recommend keeping the tomatoes fresh to add in at the end. Also, I strongly recommend having this as a side dish to a very large salad to help keep the acid levels to a minimum, and assist in digestion. I unfortunately experienced some indigestion with this one when I ate it without a salad - so that’s just a little tip! I always recommend a large salad with anything cooked like this, but I absolutely had to mention it for this meal in light of my experience.

Another point to note is that this is not a traditional paella with the super crusty base! When cooking without oil, the rice sticks too much to the bottom and does not crisp up the way it otherwise would if cooking with oil or butter. So this paella is a little more moist and softer than other types. I’ve also used arborio rice which is the closest thing I could find to bomba rice at the shops. I’ve never used bomba rice personally, but I encourage you to use it if you can with this recipe instead of arborio if it’s available to you and let me know what it was like!

I hope you enjoy this as much as everyone else did!