Food Lab: Paella Pan

"Paella PAN? That's not only not a dish or an ingredient, it's a single tasker! I thought FL was constitutionally against single taskers!"

Weeeelllll, we largely are. But sometimes they are the only way to get the desired result.

Chef Spouse and I are paella consumers but not paella creators. Mad Kitchen Scientist, on the other hand, has a Green Egg. Which is an excellent tool for making paella, assuming you have the correct pan.

He's tried a variety of different paella formulations in a variety of different pans on both the Egg and the stovetop, and while the paella has always been tasty, he's never managed to achieve the perfect socarrat.

Was a paella pan the answer?

Um, yes.

Since we were going for Very Traditional paella, Chef Spouse and I were tasked with sourcing the rabbit from one of our local poultry vendors.

Mad Kitchen Scientist made a bomb-ass sofrito, following Jose Andres's method, and procured the bomba rice, cured chorizo, piquillo peppers, and some lovely mushrooms.

The actual making of the paella was relatively simple.

Break down the rabbit.

How many Elmer Fudd jokes were there?

Infinity

Brown the rabbit, then partially cook it stovetop (which also provided some rabbit stock, which definitely did not go to waste).

Brown the mushrooms, peppers, rabbit "bits," and chorizo, and assemble the rice, stock, sofrito, and saffron.

Fire up the Egg, heat up the pan, toast the rice in olive oil, and then add all the ingredients (other than the stock and big rabbit pieces).

Add the stock and the rabbit and cook ~20 minutes

¡Come!

Check out that socarrat, y'all!

For our next trick? What ELSE can you do with a paella pan? Yes, we're taking suggestions. 

Food Lab: Dumplings

Lordy, y'all, we did a Food Lab this past weekend (more on that later), and it alerted me to the fact that we did a Food Lab back in March that I never documented.

Oops.

It's been a busy spring.

Anywho, for my birthday back in March, we did Food Lab: Dumplings (gyoza style only - no shumai). 

This has been on Chef Spouse's wishlist for a while. One, he loves dumplings. Two, it can be good garde manger, since fillings can really be whatever your lil ole heart desires. Three, they seem like a good option for parties. Four, you can make them in batches, freeze them, and then have them ready to serve in minutes because they can go straight from the freezer to the pot. 

So, dumplings.

It's now been several months, so do I remember most of what we learned? 

Nope.

Here's what I do remember:

Most filling recipes call for cabbage. You may be thinking: "What is cabbage actually bringing to the party? It's not terribly flavorful on its own. Hell, I don't even like cabbage. I'll skip it." Do not skip it. The cabbage acts as your binder for all the other ingredients, like breadcrumbs in a crab cake (or meatballs).

Yep, we used all that cabbage

You need way less filling than you think, both in your individual dumplings and overall. We overdid, as usual, with four separate full batches of filling (pork, shrimp, veg, and pork+shrimp). This resulted in a grim assembly line of "Good God, how much more filling is there?" and cramped fingers. Make less. No, less than that. No, still less.

Use wonton wrappers, preferably the circular ones. Many websites will tell you you can use square wrappers, too. They are lying. Square wrappers are BS. So is making your own. Chef Spouse has subsequently tried making the dough from scratch, and he's an ace dough maker (makes fresh pasta of all types all the time), and he can confirm: just buy the wonton wrappers. Less fuss and better results.

2 packets = good

2 packets = straight-up evil

See those janky dumplings on the left?

Square wrappers

Just say no

I could not master the cute little ruffled folds, even with eleventy-billion dumplings to practice on. Chef Spouse and The Executive Committee did great, though. So I stuck to plain half rounds, which are not as pretty but taste the same. 

See my boring half-round dumplings v

the cute ruffled dumplings

(But they were all tasty)

Since then, we've all had bags of individually frozen dumplings residing in the freezer (and you do have to be careful to fully freeze them individually or you end up with a Giant Squished-Together Multi-Dumpling Blob and then no one is happy), which have been excellent for a quick snack or first course.

Yummy dumplings, fresh from the freezer, 

ready in minutes

And yes, you could just buy bags of frozen dumplings from your favorite grocer, but that would be un-Food-Lab-ish of you, now, wouldn't it?