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Paella is a delicious one-pot Spanish dish that consists of rice, saffron, vegetables and an assortment of meats. This recipe uses chicken thighs, large shrimp and smoked sausage. To make it more macro-friendly I use smoked turkey sausage instead of pork. I also substitute Banza chickpea rice for regular rice to get more protein. It resembles orzo more than rice and works beautifully as a substitute.
The dish starts off by sauteing purple onion, red bell pepper and a lot of garlic. White wine is added to deglaze the pot and cook the raw shrimp in. From there you add in your cooked sliced smoked sausage and cooked diced chicken thighs. I highly recommend planning on making this paella later in the week to use up leftover meat. Just make a few recipes that include both smoked sausage and chicken thighs. A few ideas for recipes would be to make some smoked sausage with cauliflower mac and cheese one night and then for the chicken thighs, make my bourbon chicken. Cook some extra of each meat and then you can use that in this paella dish.
Once the meats get added to the pot next in goes the prepared Banza rice. You can use regular rice as well. If you go that route, use Basmati rice and cook 2 cups in 4 cups of chicken stock and 1/2 tsp saffron. The final ingredient to add are thawed frozen peas. It gives the dish a subtle sweetness and so much color. It’s a stunning one pot meal that provides a ton of protein and will feed a crowd!
Paella
Ingredients
- 13 oz pack of smoked turkey sausage (Eckrich) cooked and sliced
- 4 boneless skinless chicken thighs cooked and diced
- 1/2 pound large raw shelled deveined shrimp thawed
- 1 purple onion diced
- 1 red bell pepper diced
- 6 cloves minced garlic minced
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1/3 c white wine
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp
pepper
- 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
- 2 8 oz bags of banza rice prepared and rinsed
- 12 oz frozen peas thawed
Instructions
- Prepare Banza rice per package instructions and set aside.
- If you are using regular rice instead of Banza I recommend using Basmati rice. Cook 2 c rice in 4 cups of chicken stock and add ½ tsp saffron to the stock if you have it. It’s an expensive spice, but it gives the rice the yellow color and flavors it.
- In a pot over medium heat preheat olive oil and sauté onion and red bell pepper for 20 minutes.
- Add minced garlic, cook 2 minutes more.
- Deglaze with white wine.
- Add the raw shrimp along with salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Cook until the shrimp turn pink.
- Add the sliced smoked sausage and diced chicken thighs. Mix.
- Add cooked rice to the pot. Mix
- Add thawed peas to the pot. Mix and serve.