Jamie Oliver’s Twist on Paella Unites Spain

Jamie Oliver’s Twist on Paella Unites Spain

It doesn’t take a lot to get Spain into a tizzy. The country can quickly become divided on plenty of different topics including football, politics, bullfighting and even how one should drink sangria.

Jamie has always been controversial in the cooking world

and has infuriated some Spanish over his Paella.

If you really want to mess with Spain though all you need to do is mess with their signature dish, paella. It was a mistake that TV chef Jamie Oliver made that resulted in all of Spain coming together. All he had to do to pull it off was add some chorizo to paella.

It might not sound like much but feeling it isn’t means that you’re missing the point. The Spanish have been adding chorizo to their rice dishes for centuries. They love chorizo and the flavour contrast that it creates with rice.

What they don’t agree with, however, is the idea that paella is paella if it contains sausage. The Spaniards feel that paella isn’t paella when there’s sausage in it and no restaurant in Spain would serve up Paella with Sausage in it and they didn’t hold back in letting Oliver know how they feel over Twitter after he mentioned that he adds chorizo to his paella.

Many Spanish Twitter users told him that the dish shouldn’t be tampered with, while others were a little more humorous about it; comparing Oliver’s abomination to the terribly restored fresco of Jesus Christ that took the world by storm in 2012.

Other Spaniards tried to turn the tables and suggest that Oliver ruin British dishes by adding aubergines, duck, beef and ravioli to fish and chips. One particularly irate Spanish user compared Oliver to a terrorist, which was possibly a little far.

So why was adding chorizo such a sin? Paella first originated in the Valencia region and it often contains meat such as rabbit, along with fish, shellfish, vegetables and beans. Many people feel that adding chorizo would mean that it shouldn’t count as paella and should be considered some kind of “rice and stuff” dish, which is a name that is quite unflattering considering how well it might taste.

Spaniards are particularly proud of their Spanish local cuisine and nothing irks them more than when the English attempts to tamper with their tradition.

We urge Spanish politicians to take note of all this furore through; in order to unite Spain they need to identify an issue that all of Spain feels the same about. That issue seems to be paella of all things.