Recipe a Week Challenge: Instant Pot Shrimp Paella

10 weeks into my New Year's resolution, I've found a new favorite recipe! 

By the way, if you're still following through on your New Year's resolution 10 weeks into 2018 you should pat yourself on the back.  That's awesome!  The addition of an Instant Pot electric pressure cooker to our home has made sticking to my "one recipe a week" resolution so much easier.  At the same time, if you type "Instant Pot Recipes" into Pinterest, it's also easy to get very overwhelmed by the amount of recipes that come up!

I've cooked a lot of chicken or beef dishes over the last couple of weeks, so I narrowed the search to seafood Instant Pot recipes and came across one for Shrimp Paella.  Because of Boise's rich Basque history, it was a pretty daunting task to try to make anything remotely as good as the paella you find at the Basque Festival or Basque Market, but this is a super easy alternative for someone who has no Basque in them!

The rice in this recipe came out with the perfect amount of spice and was cooked just right (not too crunchy, not too mushy.) Nate liked it so much that he actually asked me to make just the rice part of it a few days later!

My only regret about this dish? It's expensive to make. The ingredients that I needed to buy (and I already had most of the spices in the cabinet) ran me $50.  Ooomph. Now you may be able to get the ingredients cheaper depending where you shop at.  At my neighborhood grocery store, the only option for buying frozen jumbo shrimp was to buy 2 lbs ($19.99.) And have you ever bought saffron? NOT CHEAP! A small vial of threads also cost me $19.99! I thought about leaving it out, but when I turned the bottle and saw the words "essential for paella," I felt trapped so I caved and bought it.

The good news? I had enough broth, wine, saffron and shrimp left over that the second pot I made only ran me the price of an onion and red pepper.  So there's that.  If you're ready to invest in the ingredients of this dish, I promise that you won't be disappointed!

Instant Pot Shrimp Paella (Via MyForkingLife)

Ingredients

• 1 lb frozen jumbo shrimp, shell and tail on
• 1 cup Jasmine rice
• 4 Tbsp butter
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chpped
• 1 red pepper, chopped
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1/2 cup white wine (I bought a $3.49 box of Chardonnay for mine)
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1 pinch saffron threads
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

Directions

• Using the saute function on your Instant Pot, melt butter.  Add onions and cook until translucent and soft.  Add garlic.  Cook for another minute.
• Add paprika, turmeric, salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes and saffron.  Cook for about a minute before adding chopped red pepper.
• Add rice and stir.  Cook for 30-60 seconds.
• Add broth and wine.  Make sure you cover all the rice.
• Add shrimp on top (do not stir!) Turn off saute function, cover Instant Pot, seal and set timer for 5 minutes at high pressure using the "manual" button.
• When Instant Pot completes cooking, do a quick release.
• When shrimp is cool enough, you can remove the shrimp to take the peels and tails off.  I chose to do that when I made mine!