A Barcelona Chef Answers Definitively: What Color Is Paella?

An instructor at a cookery school in Spain reveals the color is brown, and its darkness depends on how long onions are carmelized in their own sugar

Of course we are familiar with the Spanish rice dish paella, we say. It is the color of a Mediterranean sunrise, a coral red or saffron yellow.

Chef Rosa Camprodon shakes her head. Or maybe that's a shudder. She is our instructor at a Barcelona cooking school that caters to tourists, and she is teaching us to make paella Catalonia-style: a rich coppery brown.