Jamie Oliver's paella recipe blasted by Spaniards over inclusion of chorizo
'Adding chorizo to a paella should be an offence!'
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Your support makes all the difference.Spaniards are outraged with Jamie Oliver over his decision to re-vamp a paella recipe by adding chorizo and chicken to the mix.
Oliver shared a recipe to his paella on Tuesday evening on Twitter and saw his post attract much more attention than he was anticipating.
“Great Spanish food doesn’t get much better than paella. My version combines chicken thighs and chorizo,” the Naked Chef wrote to his 5.6 million followers
The rich dish, which hails from the Valencia region, traditionally includes meat, fish, shellfish and vegetables - but not chorizo, and the inclusion of the Spanish sausage saw Oliver bearing the brunt of much outrage.
People were quick to suggest the dish is no longer worthy of the name paella and instead should be called “rice with stuff”.
Others suggested that since Oliver made some tweaks on a Spanish traditional dish, they would do the same with British recipes… and former Prime Ministers.
The rage continued:
A quick scroll of the recipe’s webpage on jamieoliver.com shows that Oliver’s tweet reignited an existing furore. Over the last year, comments below the recipe have included: “Oh no… Adding chorizo to a paella should be an offence!”, “This is not a paella. Please, don’t misuse the world paella for a dish of rice with something” and “Not everything with rice is a paella”.
Others had more technical input, arguing paella should not be stirred as the 41-year-old suggests in his method.
Oliver is not the only British chef who has received a backlash over their take on the dish. Gordon Ramsay was blasted over his suggestion to add a few chilli peppers to the dish while Marco Pierre White was scorned for adding “more than generous helping of white wine […] and enough paprika to stop a moving train” in an article by Spanish newspaper El Pais earlier this year.
A representative for Oliver did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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