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I was making paella.... some people put an aluminium foil on it simulating a lid but other leave open with anything on it. How do you know when to put a lid or not in a pot?

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Recorded

This event was on September 24, 2024

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to course-specific questions, to how to turn your cooking passion into profit or simply hearing the perspective of a professional chef, Chef Dan is ready to answer them all.

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Question

ingrid ortega

I was making paella.... some people put an aluminium foil on it simulating a lid but other leave open with anything on it. How do you know when to put a lid or not in a pot?

Answer

So for paella in particular, um, i, I do know some people will put aluminum foil or a lid on the top of it to be able to help cook the rice that's in the paella, uh, to let it seem over. So if you have a lot of liquid in it, you don't have to really worry about it too much if your rice grains are actually underneath that liquid, but if not, you need the, the lid to be able to help kinda steam all the stuff that's in the inside. So I typically will do a paella, I do a vegetarian or vegan one. Um, and I'll just make sure that I have a good amount of liquid in it to be able to, uh, soak up into the rice. That's typically just your typical, um, you know, a little bit more liquid than you would put in rice because you're also cooking all the other ingredients with it as well too. But yeah, so a lid, basically what they're doing is helping to steam everything, um, and keep that heat and a liquid in the pot instead of letting it just kind of go up, um, you know, uh, and evaporate out, which is understandable. So, um, yeah, I just put a little extra liquid into it to be able to allow for that, uh, process and it should work just fine.

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

*Dan Marek* is a chef educator who has been teaching vegan and vegetarian cooking for over 15 years. At Rouxbe, he is our Director of Plant-Based Culinary and Development where he helps develop content, classes and builds courses for many of our partners. Dan is a board member of Slow Food Austin, the Institute of Child Nutrition, and Conscious Capitalism. He has earned his BA in Journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and holds certificates in Nutrition from Cornell University. Prior to his role with Rouxbe, Dan worked with Whole Kids Foundation training teachers and food service at schools across the country on nutrition and culinary best practices. He also worked as a Healthy Eating Educator at Whole Foods Market’s flagship store in Austin, TX, was a personal chef for some of Austin’s elite business people, taught classes in culinary techniques at Austin Community College, The Natural Epicurean, and Le Cordon Bleu. Dan also regularly volunteers cooking or speaking about nutrition for the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Marathon Kids, Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, and the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Austin and Central Texas.