How to choose a good paella

Paella is a classic recipe from our cuisine that has become a household staple, especially for weekdays and family gatherings. Rice dishes and fideuàs are perfect recipes to please everyone, and they often work as a one-dish meal.

To prepare a paella you need 2 essential things: good ingredients and a good paella (or paellera, as manufacturers call it). Today we look at why it's worth investing in a good paella pan, which paella pans we recommend, and the differences between the Carbone paella pan and the Mineral from De Buyer.

Benefits of a good paella

To make rice or fideuá you need to spread the food out very well to form a very thin layer, which you’ll cook with stock. That means using a large surface area, even when cooking for a few people, so the paella pan is, most of the time, considerably wider than the gas, ceramic, or induction ring. Why mention this? Because an even distribution of heat across the entire pan is vital for uniform cooking in these recipes, especially since the food (rice or noodles) is so prone to quickly absorbing the water from the hot stock (which is why it needs to come up to temperature evenly).

Drawbacks of a low-quality paella

There are many paella pans (or paelleras) on the market, many of them very thin and basic. The drawbacks of low-quality paella pans are:

• They are extremely thin, which implies on the one hand that the utensil it doesn't have time to properly distribute the heat, causing the heat to quickly concentrate in the center and become very hot at that point, even burning the rice or noodles, and often not even coming to a boil at the edges, leaving the food there raw.
• The thinness also implies deformation: many of those simpler paella pans warp with the heat, making them unstable and causing the juices to pool in one part of the pan, resulting (once again) in uneven cooking.
• Use of unhealthy materials: there are paella pans on the market that claim to be iron, but they can be low-quality alloys, with the presence of heavy metals such as lead or cadmium in the alloy, which are not very desirable for health. On the other hand, there are very simple nonstick paella pans, which will lead you to not distribute heat well or not last very long with their nonstick properties in good condition.
• Another thing to keep in mind with the simplest paella pans is the enamel: there are paella pans that are enameled (painted or coated with enamel) with nail polishes may not be very suitable neither for health nor for reaching high temperatures. In this regard, it is important to get a paella pan from reputable brands that care about using quality materials.

Our recommendation when choosing paella

The first thing you need to decide is whether you want a non-stick or iron paella pan.

If you're looking for the convenience of having a paella pan that isn't excessively heavy, distributes heat well, and ensures food won't stick, choose a nonstick paella pan. Good options for this purpose are the Efficient non-stick paella pan by BRA: it features a high-quality nonstick coating that will stay in good condition for a long time if you take care of it*, and it has removable handles, making it fully oven-safe. All of this offers outstanding value for money.

For those looking for traditional cooking and who don’t mind the weight of the pan, we definitely recommend choosing an iron paella pan. In the store we have two from De Buyer that deliver fabulous results and are among the most popular paella pans, with good reason: the Carbone paella pan and the paella pan Mineral. They require some care when maintaining them (since iron is more likely to stick or rust), but once you get the hang of them and see how easy everything is, there's no comparison in the results and the ways you can use them.

From left to right: BRA Efficient Non-stick Paella Pan, paella pan Carbone and the Mineral Paella Pan by De Buyer.

Both the Mineral and the Carbone paella pans are made from an iron griddle that is shaped. They have a considerable thickness (which makes them somewhat heavy), but the great advantages they have are:

• The thickness of the paella pan helps distribute heat more evenly and retain it, keeping the paella hot for longer as well.
• They are made with natural materials, free of nonstick coatings.
• It's a completely traditional cooking method, and the flavor results you get are absolutely fabulous.
• These are paella pans built to last—they’ll serve you a lifetime in the kitchen, because there’s nothing on them that can fail (the iron darkens over time, but that’s part of the seasoning process; they’re pieces that will last forever).
• Both are oven-safe.

Differences between the Mineral paella pan and the Carbone by De Buyer

The two De Buyer paella pans are very similar, but the main differences to consider when choosing one or the other are:

1. Handles: in the Mineral paella pan they are made of steel and look more elegant, but the truth is that the ones on the Carbone are very comfortable to hold.
2. La Mineral is only available in the 32 cm size (one of the most common sizes for paella pans, if not the most); whereas the Carbone offers many diameters to choose from (from 24cm to 50cm).
3. Seasoning: the Mineral paella pan comes with a natural beeswax coating. This coating is an organic component that allows you to do a simple seasoning with oil (before using the paella pan for the first time, you just need to heat a finger's depth of oil for about 10 minutes and remove it, to fill any pores it may have and prevent sticking and rusting) -you can see how to do the seasoning on a Mineral here. In the case of the Carbone, it doesn’t have any pre-treatment and you have to do a traditional seasoning: first by boiling potato peels in it and, as the second step, boiling a finger’s depth of oil (here you'll see how to make this cure).**
4. The % of iron in each paella pan: to manufacture the Mineral paella pan, an almost pure iron is used (over 99% iron), whereas the Carbone uses a mineral alloy; it is not as pure as the former. Even so, it is more than 90% pure iron, and this has no implications since paella pans, unlike frying pans, are not utensils we use every day (for which we always want to use the most natural utensils possible).
5. Because of the handle finishes and quality, materials, and the beeswax treatment, the Mineral paella pan is somewhat more expensive than the Carbone.

NOTES:

*By “taking care of a nonstick paella pan,” we mean: do not use metal utensils for cooking in it, hand-wash, and heat over low to medium heat at first, until the entire surface has warmed up.

**Seasoning paella pans is really easy, don’t be intimidated. If you watch the videos we’ve linked to, you’ll see it. It’s just one or two steps before the first use, with nothing complicated about it, and you’ll have it done in a few minutes. This will give your paella pans a natural protection that helps prevent your rice dishes and fideuàs from sticking, and it also protects against rust.