The night is dark and full of terrors. This paella is dense and full of flavor. Stop by an Asian supermarket and grab some vegan shrimp things. Or just use mushrooms if they freak you out. This is the part of the recipe where I tell you about how I traveled to Ibiza in 1992 to milk my own almonds, harvest my own saffron and rip up my birth certificate.

As always, if you dig this recipe, tag me at @draggedthroughthegarden on instagram and we can talk about how weird those vegan shrimp things are.

Plant Based Paella. Is it worth maxing your credit card out on saffron?

PLANT BASED PAELLA

prep time: 30 minutes
cook time: 60 minutes

I mean look at how fucking weird those things are.

This recipe is a bunch of little steps and then it all comes together in the end. This recipe will also require three types of proteins. You can sub them out if you wish, but I used —

vegan shrimp (asian supermarket)
soyrizo (trader joe’s)
seitan (upton’s)

To start, you’re going to season your seitan because you are an adult.

What you’ll need:

seitan
garlic
lemon
salt
pepper
paprika

Open your seitan up and toss it all into a plastic bag. Add a bunch of salt and pepper into the bag. Then about two tablespoons of paprika. Mince two cloves or garlic and add them directly into the bag. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon into the bag. If you have something you can zest the lemon with, zest that same half of the lemon into the bag. Shake the contents up and put it in the fridge for now. Of the three proteins, you will cook these last.

I’m not going to post the picture of the bag because it’s not very sexy. Next up is the soyrizo.

What you’ll need:

soyrizo
salt
pepper
olive oil

Open up the chorizo and remove it from the casing. Sorry. Soyrizo. Add some olive oil into a pan and bring the heat to a medium flame. Cook all of the chorizo and set it aside when you’re done. The soyrizo is also very unflattering looking.

Next, wipe out that pan and rid it of all soyrizo residue. You’re going to cook them little shrimpy things in there now.

What you’ll need:

weird vegan shrimpy things
olive oil
butter
garlic
lemon
salt

Bring your flame back up to where you had it earlier and add some olive oil. Then add a knob of butter and some minced garlic. Put the shrimp things in the pan and let them cook on each side for a few minutes until they brown up a little bit. Once they look less weird, take them out of the pan and add lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Now again, if you really want to, you can just use mushrooms instead of shrimp. Just add a little more salt to absorb some of the moisture.

Next, get your seitan out of the fridge and throw it all into the pan. Because it was lemon, garlic, oil and butter in the pan previously - you don’t really have to wipe the pan unless you really want to.

Let them cook out for a few minutes on each side until as crisp as you want them. They will eventually end up in a broth mixture so it’s up to you. I crisped them up a lil bit.

After your seitan is cooked, set it aside. So now you have chorizo, shrimpies and seitan all ready to go. The second half of this recipe is putting your veggies and herbs together. Then everything will end up submerged in vegetable broth.

What you’ll need:

onion
red pepper
parsley
lemon
garlic
salt
pepper
paprika
canned tomatoes
short grain rice
vegetable broth
saffron
frozen peas
more lemon

Get out a deep pan (or pot) and throw 32 ounces of vegetable broth in there. Then add a little less than a cup of water. Turn the flame on but keep it as low as possible. Now take some of that expensive ass saffron and add it into the pan…or pot.

I can’t believe I sold my car for this stuff!

I can’t believe this picture cost me three months salary!

Let your saffron float around in the broth at a very low temperature while you get the rest of this stuff ready.

Next, rinse off a bunch of parsley. Remove it all from the stems and toss a big ol’ fistful of them into a bowl. Add olive oil to the bowl. Add lemon zest to the bowl. Add lemon juice to the bowl! Mince up two cloves of garlic and ADD TO BOWL. Add salt and pepper to the bowl.

Stir that stuff up real good and set it aside with the other stuff taking up space on your counter. Now it’s time to dice up some red pepper and white onion. Dice up the aforementioned red pepper and white onion. You’ll probably end up with more white onion but it’s cool. Add some oil into a clean pan and you guessed it, medium flame. Add the red pepper and white onion.

If done correctly, it should look like this.

Let your pepper and onion cook a little bit and throw a pinch of salt in there. Next, mince up two more gloves of garlic and throw them in the pan too. Then you’re going to take about a half cup of canned tomatoes and add that into the pan. Bring the flame up a little bit and mix everything up. Cook everything for about five minutes and then add three cups of short grain rice. Uncooked short grain rice.

Your situation should now be similar to this.

Mix all that cup and cook for a minute. Then kill the flame.

Now bring the flame on your broth up a teeny tiny bit and now you are going to add literally all of the things into the broth, being careful not to splash yourself with precious saffron water. Add your pan full of stuff into the broth. Then add your bowl of herbs and other stuff. Then add your seitan and soyrizo. Don’t add the shrimpies.

Now everything is in one pot, add a half cup of frozen peas.

Now give everything a stir to the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom. Bring the flame up to a little bit less than medium. Throw a lid on the pot and let it cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. While that’s cooking, cut up some lemons. You can do wedges or however you wanna do it.

After 10 minutes, your broth should now have solidified some. For troubleshooting purposes — if it’s still a brothy mixture, try and scrape the bottom of the pan to check for rice stuck down there. This will prevent everything from cooking properly.

If your mixture is looking more like rice than soup, you’re in good shape. Add your shrimp things right on top of everything and put the lid back on. Cook for five more minutes. Kill the flame and remove the lid. Let it sit for a couple of minutes and then squeeze some more lemon juice on there. Add your lemon wedges and some parsley.

Now please send me some money because I lost my family, my house and my car because of saffron.

Venmo — @draggedthroughthegarden

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