Although paella is an icon of Spanish cuisine, you often find far from authentic versions outside of Spain. This delicious dish, which originally comes from Valencia, is famous worldwide, but its essence is often lost in culinary translation.
Macarena is a Spanish woman who lives in the United States and there she seems to have come across a version of paella that she didn’t like at all, but that all Valencians will like even less, as they are very sensitive to this issue.
As can be seen in a video that she uploaded to her TikTok, the young woman found a display case where they serve Spanish rice, something that she interpreted as paella. “What do you think about this?” she asks her father. “What a fucking shit,” she responds as she laughs in disbelief at how little resemblance she has to a traditional paella.
However, as they have reminded you in comments, it seems that it is the tiktoker and her parent who are wrong: they do not have paella in front of them, but rather Spanish rice as such, which is a Mexican preparation that has nothing to do with paella beyond that the name can confuse.
It is a dish of cooked rice, as an accompaniment, with a variety of ingredients that can include tomato, onion, garlic, pepper and spices such as cumin and coriander. The combination of these ingredients gives the rice a reddish color and a rich, aromatic flavor.
