Spanish rice with octopus recipe

Rice with octopus, octopus with rice. This is an exquisite recipe that can compete with any seafood paella. It carries a little secret that gives it great flavor: instead of using broth or fish stock, as in traditional paellas, in this case we use the resulting water from boiling the octopus.

Some preliminary considerations:

1. This recipe is ideal to take advantage of any left overs of octopus, and especially its cooking water. But if you want to cook the octopus from scratch, I recommend to follow all the detailed instructions in the Galician-style octopus recipe.
2. For a traditional paella, you need at least double, and ideally two and a half times the amount of liquid compared to the amount of rice. By cooking the rice in a greater amount of liquid, we can obtain a sticky or even brothy rice. A trick that requires a lot of experience is to regulate the level of heat in which we will cook the rice, in order to regulate the evaporation of the water and obtain a more or less dry rice, according to our preference.

Procedure:

Boil the octopus cooking water in a saucepan and reserve. Also leave the ñora soaked in boiling water, ideally for at least an hour. Then separate the meat with a tip and reserve, discarding the skin.

Heat a little extra virgin olive oil in a pan or “paella”. Chop the onion and garlic, and fry until tender. Add the crushed tomato, the paprika and the ñora meat. Cook for a few minutes, always stirring to prevent it from sticking or burning. Then add the rice and brown it. Finally add the water and cook for about 16 minutes (the exact cooking time for the rice will always be indicated on the package). In the final minutes, add the octopus in the exact position for the final presentation. The idea is not to overcook it, but just heat it up.

Garnish with a little chopped parsley on top and serve.

Tips and tricks:

1. Other additional details on the preparation of rice and paellas can be consulted in our black rice recipe.
2. After adding the water to the paella, check and add salt if necessary. Keep in mind that octopus is naturally very salty, and therefore, so is its cooking water.
3. Unlike other Spanish rice dishes, in this recipe we have dispensed with saffron, but it is possible to add it if desired.