¿What is the right size of paella pan for the amount of rations I want?

¿For how many people is this paella pan?,¿Can I fit 2 kilograms of rice in this paella?,¿What size of paella pan do I need to buy for 6 people?,¿Do I need to buy a new paella pan or the one I have more than suffices for what I want to do?

You probably have made one of these questions when you were planning dinner or event with your friends, companions, or family, leaving you indecisive and worried that if you would be able to make that paella you want to surprise them all with.

Don’t worry, we here at Originalpaella bring you a solution for this kind of doubts and similar in this concise table, you will only need to give it a cursory look too know if you have your perfect paella or need to buy a new one, we even offer you the exact number of rations that you can obtain with your paella pan.

¿Pretty easy on the eyes, isn’t it?, don’t worry, even if the table itself explains much of herself alone, we can still give it a more profound analysis.

You can find the size of the paella pan in the left part of the table, all the dimensions are based in the superior diameter of the paella, as it allows us to know the surface we can cover with rice and our ingredients.

Following this, we offer you a division of the number of rations that you can obtain with your paella pan, keep in mind that these rations for person are based in 100 grams of dry rice for person, if you include more for each person, the measurement we provide you will not be accurate.

The division of rations follows this hierarchical order: Thin capacity or Valencian, highlighted in yellow in the table, is based in obtaining the famous and ever coveted socarrát, the most common and classic way of preparing paella, as it allows us to obtain an homogeneous cooking of the layer of rice as well as the coagulation of a veil of grease and protein, which is what it gives the socarrát that special taste.

The medium capacity, highlighted in blue in the table, implies that we have filled our paella pan at medium capacity of rice, which while it will allow us to preserve perfectly its flavors, we won’t obtain and uniform socarrát as the thin capacity, but we will retain a better flavor than a full capacity paella pan.

The full capacity, highlighted in red in the table, implies that we have filled the paella pan to it’s maximum. While it will give us the highest number of rations, most of the flavor of the paella will be centered on its lower point, given that the upper layer will absorb the flavor it can before the broth goes down below, as well as that most of the upper layer won’t have enjoyed the same homogeneous cooking that the lower layer. While not necessarily meaning that the paella has lost its flavor, it is true that we will have sacrificed a more potent general flavor for a greater number of rations that it’s other alternatives.

We would also like to recommend you about which type of rices we could potentially use for our paella; we commonly recommend the use of round rice because these do not tend to open themselves during cooking. If you are looking to use a low paella or valencian, we recommend you the use of soft and round grain, such as senia or bahía rice, as it possesses a greater capacity of absorption of flavors as well as being more sensible to overcooking. If we where to use a high paella pan, we would recommend hard and round grain, such as bomba or Maratelli rice, which have a higher resistance to overcooking, but don’t absorb flavors as well as other alternatives.

We would recommend for the general use, just as we explain more in deep in our blog about types of rice, albufera rice, a hybrid within hard and soft round grain of rice which combines all its advantages without any of its disadvantages.

If you also have doubts about which kind of paella pan is more accurate for you, you can find information over which different kind of paella pans exists and their advantages and disadvantages in our blog.

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