http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...-paella-recipe

Apparently Spaniards are up in arms that Jamie Oliver includes chorizo in his Paella recipe. Most supermarket paellas also include it as an ingredient. I love chorizo and can't see the problem. After all, the so called authentic recipe varies greatly from one region to another. Is it just a case of some people being overly precious. We know that pizza, Chinese and Indian also differ greatly from the authentic cuisine but doesn't make them less enjoyable.

No problem from me. I love chorizo in my paella. In fact I love chorizo in most things.

That is flipping hilarious! Maybe Jamie should stick to cooking British pub grub and leave the international recipes to those who know them best.

I thought the idea of paella was that it was a peasant dish that included whatever scraps and left overs were available? So if you have chorizo - chuck it in!
Mind you I'm not actually a fan of chorizo so I could do without it, thanks. Best paella I had was in the Sierra Nevada region of Adulacia - rabbit and chicken, no sea food.

Or maybe the people who are upset over this should get over themselves. What good cook doesn't tweak recipes to suit their own tastes?

It's a strange thing, in Britain & the States we have no problems doing this, but in countries like France, Spain & Italy a Classic Dish is a Classic Dish and you are not allowed to mess around with it.

This comment in the Guardian wins the Internet for today, I think.

ben3675 17h ago

The sort of grumpy f****** who told me pickled onion Monster Munch shouldn't serve as croutons on a Salade Niçoise. Haters gonna hate.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...er-against-him

I find about a million things annoying about Oliver but this really isn't one of them.

Sounds absolutely vile, yet strangely appealing.

I will give it a go purely for research purposes.

Upset might be too strong a word. Are people realy upset? Or just enjoying a bit of tongue-in-cheek banter?


Exactly. I might even go so far as saying all supermarket paellas. Certainly Tesco, Morrisons and Waitrose are all prawn, chicken and chorizo based.
And they've been around for about ten years. Used to buy them frequently.
No-one seems to be bothered about those.

Good job too, I wouldn't touch the real thing with a bargepole. Why I'd want a dish filled with inedible shells I don't know.

Could probably say the same about any Chinese or Indian supermarket ready meal too, in terms of authenticity. Supermarket vindaloo's and jalfrezi's have about as much heat and spice as an apple.

Although thats not quite true as each region or even village often have their own ways of doing things and family recipes can also be different. People get so precious about stuff like this, if you like it, you like it.

I have no issue with this. It just seems like another opportunity to attack Jamie Oliver

Yeah, you're right, most were very much tongue-in-cheek. I would suggest, though, that the person who called it 'an insult not only to our gastronomy but to our culture' might want to remove the stick from up his or her backside.

Chorizo Paella... don't give him any ideas for his next kid naming escapade.

Yes and I'm all for it. He should be attacked constantly until the day he disappears and stops bothering us.

I cannot stand jamie oliver. His recent sugar tax campaign has been incredibly annoying.

As well as completely hypocritical.

His restaurants are also shite.

You are right. Many countries do take their food incredibly seriously, something that perhaps we should do in this country.

It is interesting to see, for example, that people mention supermarket paella's contain chorizo, I wonder if any self-respecting Spaniard would buy their paella from a supermarket.

Some people treat recipes as if they have been passed down on tablets of stone from the culinary gods. To me they are just suggestions around which to improvise based on what I like and what I have to hand.

I'm sure I watched a programme years ago that said traditionally if you lived by the Spanish coast you had seafood in your paella but if you lived inland you had chicken and chorizo. As they were very much an eat what you grow/catch culture. So it's not something Jamie O has cooked up it's been about for years.

I made chilli con carne once and used chickpeas instead of kidney beans. i'd probably be shot for that if it was a spanish dish

A traditional paella contains chicken and rabbit. I'd have thought chorizo would go really well with those, and given that when I lived in Spain, many did contain chorizo I'm wondering if it's just the press stoking up some non-existent furore.

Knowing Jamie oliver, he is probably insisting spanish people use chorizo in paella or will be fined for it

Indeed. It's a fuss about nothing. If you look online there are countless paella recipes containing chorizo. Here are just a few:

https://www.thepaellacompany.co.uk/c...zo-paella.html
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/c...chorizo-paella
https://realfood.tesco.com/recipes/c...ch-paella.html
https://www.gousto.co.uk/cookbook/fi...chorizo-paella

Even Delia uses it in her paella:
http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/i...spanish/paella

He's campaigning for a tax on paella as we speak.