This is a North African take on a Portuguese recipe, probably inspired during the colonial occupation of Mozambique. It calls for a spice called Sazón con Aazafrán, a combination of coriander, garlic, cumin and annatto, and flavored saffron. Don’t substitute – it gives the dish a unique flavor and golden color. It was easy to make and can serve at least six people.
Cook some nice jasmine or other long grain white rice, to about 3 cups worth. I used 1 and 1/2 cups rice and 3 cups water it worked out to about 3 cups cooked rice.
While your rice is cooking, sauté a large onion and 10 cloves of garlic in a half cup of butter in a large frying pan, about 5 minutes until golden but not brown. You can see the definitive directions for cooking garlic here.
Add a 12 oz bottle of beer, 1/4 cup of dry white wine, 4 or more packets of the Sazón con Aazafrán (I used 4 packets, I think you get away with up to 6) to your pan. Salt to taste and add hot sauce to your heat preference – I just sprinkled a bit but go wild if you wish. Bring it all to boil and simmer for about 15 minutes, until the liquid reduces slightly.
Your rice should be done by now, take it off the heat and set it aside.
Add a pound of large shrimp to the sauce – you can leave the shells on, or leave only the tails, or peel them entirely, your call. Cook until the shrimp turns pink, 4 or 5 minutes. This is also where you can substitute cooked chicken for the shrimp. Stir in a 1/4 cup of chopped fresh parsley. Add the cooked rice and mix it all up.
Top with some more parsley when plating, just for pretty. Should you make this? Yes!
I am definitely going to make this. I’m a picky eater and have a tendency to eat the same few foods over and over again. Shrimp is one of those and I’m always looking for new ways to prepare it. It’s a great excuse to go to the local Supermercado for the seasoning and pick up a couple of Conchas since I’m there!
@Hannibal, even the carnivore enjoyed this. It introduced me to a new spice, and I will go with more spice packets, or maybe more hot sauce when I make it again. Surprisingly, they carried the spice in our regular, bland grocery store. I hope that you like it!
they carried the spice in our regular, bland grocery store
@Elliecoo But the grocery store only carries mass produced Bimbo brand Conchas and now I want the bakery ones, so good with a cup of coffee in the afternoon!
@Hannibal, what you said!
Oh, I needed this opening to rave about my new rice cooker. 20 bucks, Oster, works like a dream, has a steamer basket so while the rice is cooking you can steam some vegetables. I usually steam rice, which is a big production, but also the only way I can cook rice successfully, until now!
@Sedevilc, rave away! I lost some reachable (to me, your 5’1″ friend) storage space in the great kitchen renovation of 2020, so I am trying not to add small appliances. I will think of you as I scrape sticky rice off the bottom of a sauce pan.
Ten cloves of garlic and 1/2 cup butter to 3 cups rice plus seasoning [I have never heard of, but Goya products abound in the smaller supermarkets in my neighborhood] plus shrimp—this is definitely going on the menu for next week!
@MatthewCrawley it was really quite tasty.I sort of cringed at the amount of butter, but when dispersed among the volume produced it isn’t so bad? Also, the cardiologist told the carnivore that butter is better than those heart healthy spread things (like Smart Balance) within cooking. Something about healthy fats, reprocessing, lipids…I was just thrilled to have green light from a health professional to use oils and butter again!
@Cousin Matthew’s Tingling Leg I failed to link to you above…le sigh.
I’m kind of still in anti-goya mode. For the same reasons I stopped shopping at Marshall’s, TJ Maxx, quit wearing New Balance and will never rest my head on a My Pillow.
Ah shit. TJMaxx and Marshall’s are on that list? I missed that. Damn
This is also where you can substitute cooked chicken for the shrimp
substitute?
*adds chicken chorizo and whitefish and calls it paella*
on that note….i really need to get a stove with a big center burner for my paella pan in my next place….
also also….saffron is surprisingly expensive..i kinda love the stuff tho
…I have always aspired to the sort of kitchen that had one of those wok burners that’s like a recessed jet-engine-looking thing with a hole above it so you can use a round-bottomed wok without some sort of annoyingly-flimsy frame thing…but I’d like to think one of those would work for a paella-pan, too?
yup…thats pretty much what i mean
4 regular burners of varying sizes and a big fuck off jet engine in the middle…..thats what i want
@SplinterRIP, I just had all sorts of imaginings of you as a mad-scientist-mage-ninja combo cooking wildly over a jet-engine stove. Made me laugh.
I think any gas stove will work well with a wok, mine does, no ring required. So, it’s kind of a cool stove, I bought it at a restaurant supply place during my first kitchen remodel. It is a black Wolf range, a behemoth with 6 burners, 2 ovens, 9 pilot lights and a griddle. The silly part is I live alone. But you know, when the covid is over y’all can come over for dinner, 6 burners, 6 cooks!
I’m there!
I can only dream. We have a Viking but it comes with a measly 4 burners and one oven. However, it must be some standard size because it fits perfectly in the space left by our previous gas stove. I juts out a little but that’s all to the good because the previous occupant was flush, so now I have a slightly bigger oven to cram stuff in. Plus it is so powerful. If I were Det. William Murdoch of the Toronto Constabulary it would take me about 48 hours to achieve nuclear fission using it.
Your kitchen must be huge.
Not really, it was a mud room, cold pantry, tiny galley and probably a butler’s pantry at some point. When I moved in the butler’s pantry and galley had been combined into a L-shaped kitchen. Now it is one room. The stove takes up a huge chunk of what was the cold pantry. BTW, shit they don’t tell you when you buy a commercial range is you need a custom vent hood, that cost more than the stove itself.
@farscythe saffron is quite popular in Amish/Mennonite cooking here in the county. They have some local stores who sell it rather inexpensively in bulk (like a few ounces in a container).
my supermarket sells it at about $2 for half a gram
(i mean…its the same price they charge for all their other herbs and spices….but you only get a couple strands of safron in a little vial for it..lol)
That’s because the only way to harvest saffron is to pick the damned threads out of crocus flowers by hand. It’s super labor intensive, so also super expensive.
seee…in theory that makes sense
yet the people doing the labour are poor and somehow the people paying them arent
riddle me that?
(okay you dont need to….i know labour is underpaid on one end of the bill and overpriced by the time it gets to the customer)
Being where you are, do you have access to those delicious Andalusian and Catalonian sausages, of which there are hundreds of varieties? I know you’re in the sausage belt, and you must be flooded with Dutch and German ones, but the Spanish ones are just, I don’t know. I lived in Germany for a while, a long while, I kind of overstayed my student welcome but my host university was into it, and had all types of sausages there but the Spanish ones, I think, are even better. I don’t exactly know why. Here in America European sausages are very rare, and Spanish sausages almost unknown. It must have something to do with USDA “food standards” but almost every day brings a new scandal, the latest being glass-laced Hot Pockets distributed nationwide (which is a very American calamity to occur) but I would happily eat all the unpasteurized cheeses and European sausages if it weren’t as expensive as Wagyu beef.
i do have access to them…but not always…tend to have to rely on special offers at the supermarkets
further down south you get all the flavours all the time…but im waaay up north…in the whitest part of the country…and the supermarkets stock up to match the locals preference…..which is to say….bland shit…the bumpkins here no likey the spices or foods they cant pronounce…
i mostly rely on the asian and antilles tokos for my interesting foods (and good noodles)
I was totally riveted until we got to the beer and wine. I wonder if using chicken stock would still work.
@butcherbakertoiletrymaker, I see no reason why chicken stock wouldn’t work just as well – I think the idea is to make the taste a bit richer, so liquid of choice?
I’m so surprised this doesn’t have linguica or a different sausage added to it. It looks soooo delicious though, I’m going to have to make it.