Boerewors & Seafood Paella Recipe
A great recipe to make a South African paella!
This Boerewors & Seafood Paella Recipe is a crowd-pleaser. If you have friends coming around for a braai, why not make this instead? Everyone can contribute a few ingredients, and it’s easy enough to prepare while catching up. Instead of chorizo, I added boerewors to this paella, and with some Cape Malay spices, it became a true South African-inspired dish!
Ingredients to make a Boerewors & Seafood Paella
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 red onion, diced
50g PnP Let’s Cook Garlic & Herb
1 tin (400g) PnP Live Well Chopped Peeled Tomatoes
Salt and pepper
¼ cup white wine
400g boerewors
2 cups PnP long-grain white rice
25g Cape Malay Curry spice
5 cups chicken stock
125g frozen peas
400g frozen prawns
250g PnP Local West Coast mussels in half-shell
200g calamari strips
10g PnP Let’s Cook fresh parsley
Lemons for garnish
How to Prepare the Boerewors & Seafood Paella
Light the coals and brown the boerewors and calamari strips on the grid. The aim is not to cook them through but just to add some flavour before incorporating them into the paella.
Heat the paella pan on the grid.
When the pan is hot, add olive oil. Add the onion and Cape Malay spices, and cook until the onion is translucent. Then, add the garlic.
Add the rice to the pan and pour in the wine. Cook for 10 minutes.
Next, add the tin of tomatoes, salt, and pepper. Stir and cook for 5 minutes.
Pour the broth slowly all around the pan and jiggle it to distribute the rice evenly. From this point onwards, do not stir the mixture.
Bring the liquid to a boil, then reduce the heat to a medium-low coal fire.
You can gently shake the pan back and forth once or twice during cooking, but again, do not stir the rice.
Cook the paella uncovered for about 15–18 minutes.
Add the boerewors, prawns, mussels, calamari, and peas to the paella.
Continue cooking for about 5 more minutes until most of the liquid has been absorbed and the rice on top is nearly tender. (If your rice is still undercooked, add ¼ cup more water or broth and continue cooking.)
Remove the pan from heat and garnish with fresh parsley and lemon slices. Serve immediately.
Enjoy! Please tag me on Instagram if you’ve made this recipe, I’d love to see it!
To see how I made it, watch the reel below:
More South African-inspired Recipes
Below the newsletter block, you will find some more South African-inspired recipes.
If you’re looking for a Mexican/South African combination, these Bobotie Quesadilla Fold Overs are delicious with a Mango Atchar Side. Or how about a real South African braai broodjie, made with bobotie leftover mince?
Talking cooking on the fire, there are few dishes more South African than those cooked in a potjie pot. So if you want to know how to make a good South African potjie, I’ve got your back! I also recently made a Vegetarian Samp, Bean and Creamed Butternut Potjie with Grilled Halloumi, which was delicious too.
If it’s meat you’re looking for, you can get the best Ostrich meat in our country, so why not prepare a juicy ostrich steak?
Last but not least, I have made a South African Inspired Paella before, which also included boerewors, prawns, half shell mussels and calamari rings, but was slightly different from the recipe above.
About Shawn Godfrey
Photo credit: Niki M Photography
Shawn Godfrey is an entrepreneur based in Cape Town, South Africa. After the Covid-19 lockdown saw his business in financial distress, cooking was the creative outlet that helped to keep him sane. To keep track of his recipes, and encourage friends and families to join him, he starts his instagram account The Roasted Dad.
Fast-forward to late 2021 - on a whim Shawn (encouraged by his wife Lianne) enters MasterChef South Africa. It is a crazy time of life: running a 200 people business and struggling to keep it profitable, two small children with a third on the way, and about to move into a new house. But when Shawn gets selected to be one of the 20 contestants participating in the fourth season of MasterChef South Africa, he decides to go all in. Leaving his 7-month-pregnant wife to look after their then three and one-year-old children, he battles it out and comes back home five weeks later with the trophy and a million rand prize money in his pocket.
It all started with an Instagram account, but The Roasted Dad is so much more now. Shawn has stayed his entrepreneurial self and whilst he hosts Private Dinner Parties and Cook-with-Me Demos, does Restaurant Take-Overs, he still runs the lighting company and several other businesses.
On his blog, Shawn shares Restaurant Reviews and Accommodation Reviews, and gives an insight into the wild and wonderful life he leads together with his wife Lianne, and their three children Aiden (6), Olivia (4) and Harvey (2).
Sign up to the newsletter below to be kept up to date with events, new recipes and reviews, or contact Shawn to chat about recipe creation, restaurant takeovers and public speaking events.
This Boerewors & Seafood Paella Recipe is a crowd-pleaser. If you have friends coming around for a braai, why not make this instead? Everyone can contribute a few ingredients, and it’s easy enough to prepare while catching up. Instead of chorizo, I added boerewors to this paella, and with some Cape Malay spices, it became a true South African-inspired dish!