Paella is the typical dish par excellence of Spanish cuisine. This rice with seafood or meat has become popular all over the world, although in Spain certain traditions surround it. For example, why is Sunday the day this dish is prepared?
It is considered a holiday dish, family meal or Sunday. And although its origin seems to be in Valencia, it is a food that has spread throughout Spain.
Spanish tradition
It is not something that happens randomly. This tradition has a very intimate relationship with the families that worked in coastal areas or close to the land. They worked during the week and spent the morning of their holiday making a dish using everything they had. That is why paella has different versions, depending on whether it is eaten in places by the sea or in the mountains. However, it is still not understood why the coastal areas waited until Sunday to make the rice, despite having fresh seafood all week.
It could be said that paella is a harnessing dish, although currently it is prepared with more elaborate ingredients. Luckily, rice is currently the star of many meals at home and, although Sunday is the best day to taste it, we have adapted it to simpler recipes during the week.
For this reason, many houses and restaurants serve paella on Sundays. As a symbol of tradition and as a highly elaborate dish. Eating rice on a festive day is synonymous with greatness in Spanish homes.
Thursdays in restaurant menus
What may be more surprising is that, although paella has always been eaten at home on Sundays, some restaurants and bars include this dish on their weekly menu. Although no one quite knows why. Curiously, they do it on Thursdays, and it may be due to another tradition that has two origins.
On the one hand, it is said that the fish was brought in on Mondays and would be transported little by little to the inland cities. That is to say, some cities, such as Madrid, the fish did not arrive until later in the week, usually Thursday, which meant that that was the best day to serve the fish paella on the menu.
The other theory is that restaurants do a big weekly shop on Fridays and therefore prepare the paella on Thursdays to use any leftover meat, fish, shellfish or vegetables before they go bad.