Often referred to as the national dish of Spain, paella traces its roots to the eastern shores of Europe in the port city of Valencia on the edge of the Mediterranean, and the rice that the Moors brought with them when they conquered the region.

As the story goes, the dish was created when servants of the Moorish kings began scraping together meals for their families by taking the leftover scraps from royal banquets and cooking them together in giant pots with rice and anything else that it was easy to get their hands on — including tomatoes, beans, onions and sometimes even snails or rabbits. With Valencia being a port city, shellfish and other seafood soon made their way into the humble dish.

As for the name, paella takes its moniker from the flat, oversized pan that the dish ended up commonly being cooked in over an open fire, “la paella.” In addition to a cooking vessel, the double-handled pan also doubled as a serving vessel people would gather around and eat from it with wooden spoons.

Your home kitchen, sadly, probably does have a fire pit. It also, sadly, probably does not have a big, ol’ paella pan.

But, as Chef Lolo Manso of three-restaurant chain Socarrat Paella Bar in New York City explains, that doesn’t mean you can’t make paella at home as the pan and open fire are not required as long as the dish meets other mandatory requirements.

“There are no rules for cooking paella. You can make paella in a casserole dish, thick cast-iron pan or even a frying pan,” Manso tells InsideHook. “If you use the paella pan, great. But if you never use it, it can be great as well. It’s different, but it’s not the end of the world. At the end of the day, paella is a comfort food that you can make anywhere. You can cook the same thing in a wok that you can in a frying pan. Same thing with the paella pan. As long as you cook the rice nicely and it tastes good, you can do paella anywhere.”

No matter what it is cooked in — and a thick cast-iron pan works just fine — paella must have a broth base, well-cooked rice that stays firm and doesn’t get soggy and draw its flavoring from a mixture of finely chopped vegetables simmered in oil with garlic that’s known as sofrito. Another key component of paella is where Manso’s collection of restaurants gets its name: socarrat.

“We looked it up somewhere and the definition is socarrat is the ‘seductive caramelization of the bottom layer of a perfect paella when the liquid is absorbed and the rice is done.’ It’s when the rice in the pan gets a little dry and a little crispy and very crunchy. It’s a crust on the bottom of the pan with a nice texture. Every country that makes rice has a dish where the rice gets dry, crispy and is crunchy that is their version of socarrat.”

Except possibly France, based on a story Manso heard many years ago.

“I don’t know if it’s true or not, but there used to be a story about a very famous French chef having paella for the first time,” he says. “After trying it, he said, ‘Oh my God, this is terrible. This is seafood, chicken and beef. That’s just disgusting.’ It was a lot of things together, but after he finished he said, “But I really like it. It’s so good.” Paella is something special. When you do it right is, I think it is a masterpiece. I have family in Spain that I don’t see that often. I love them and they are great, but I don’t go to see them as much as I am supposed to. With paella it’s the same thing. It’s something wonderful and great that people don’t eat as much as they are supposed to.”

Now that we’re all free from The Pan, that can certainly change.

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