Jamie Oliver embroiled in delicious media backlash

Many claimed with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s war on sugar that he was taking food too seriously. Now it seems the shoe is on the other foot with many attacking Jamie online for his version of the classic Spanish dish, paella.

Hundreds of people, a lot of them Spanish, took to Twitter to fry Jamie after he released his version of the dish. Jamie tweeted out the recipe saying, “Good Spanish food doesn’t get much better than paella”, with his version including chicken thighs and chorizo.

One of the first to be outraged was Spanish journalist Vicent Marco who posted “”Come to Valencia to try the real paella and stop making ‘rice with whatever'”. Concluding with “Your dish is everything but paella.” And that was one of the “nice” ones.

Jamie’s dish was called “an abomination” and “An insult not only to our gastronomy but to our culture,”. One user compared Jamie’s version of paella to the botched Jesus painting restoration that took social media by storm a few years ago.

@jamieoliver pic.twitter.com/0rNsJkrS0x

— churreznos (@churreznos) October 4, 2016

It seems the primary reason for the outrage is his inclusion of chorizo, which is considered a major faux pas in the traditional version of the dish. While some called for a boycott of Jamie, others called for the outright burning of his books in protest. One Twitter user seemed to sum up the thoughts of many when he simply wrote, “Thanks for destroying our most famous recipe. Please, don’t use the word “paella” to describe rice with random stuff”.

@jamieoliver Thanks for destroying our most famous recipe. Please, don’t use the word “paella” to describe rice with random stuff

— Francesc Alonso (@Pacosimat) October 4, 2016

What do you think? Outrage over nothing or if you are going to do a country’s dish do it how they do it?