Before we moved to Valencia, we’d visited Spain quite a few times. We’d been to Madrid, Andalusia, Asturias, Barcelona, Valencia, and various other places around the country. We’d eaten plenty of tapas, pinchos, jamón, chorizo, and more plates of things involving pork than I could possibly remember.
But somehow, we’d never encountered sobrasada, or at least we’d never noticed it.
It wasn’t until we moved to Valencia that we started seeing this mysterious reddish-orange substance spread on little pieces of bread. Eventually curiosity got the better of us, as it usually does when food is involved, and we tried a pincho topped with sobrasada.
We loved it.
Sobrasada is now a staple in our refrigerator, which is slightly remarkable considering that not very long ago we didn’t even know it existed.
So, What Exactly Is Sobrasada?
At its simplest, sobrasada is a soft, spreadable cured sausage made primarily from pork, pork fat, paprika, salt, and spices. Although you’ll find it in Valencia and elsewhere along Spain’s Mediterranean coast, it’s most strongly associated with Mallorca, where Sobrasada de Mallorca has protected status.
If you’ve never tried it, describing the texture as “spreadable sausage” probably doesn’t make it sound particularly appetizing, but that’s essentially what it is. Depending on the variety, it can range from fairly mild and slightly sweet to distinctly spicy, with the paprika providing both its characteristic flavor and its striking red-orange color.
Now, there is another red, spreadable pork sausage that many people have heard of: ‘Nduja. This is a spicy Calabrian sausage made from pork and plenty of hot red chili peppers, and it’s become something of a darling of the cooking world over the past several years. The two aren’t identical. ‘Nduja generally has considerably more fire, while sobrasada tends to be richer, sweeter, and much more paprika-forward.
But put them side by side and it’s difficult not to wonder whether they’re related.
And that’s where things get interesting.
Spain, Italy, and a Very Complicated Family Tree
There are stories connecting the development of sobrasada with settlers from Calabria who came to Mallorca, particularly the Sóller Valley, bringing their sausage-making traditions with them. According to this version of the story, their sausage-making tradition adapted to Mallorca, eventually incorporating the local peppers and paprika that give modern sobrasada its distinctive character.
It’s a wonderful story. Unfortunately, food history rarely cooperates by providing a nice, tidy family tree.
Versions of sausages called sobrasada, sobressada, or something remarkably similar appear in records from the Mediterranean as far back as the early 1400s. One particularly intriguing reference comes from 1403, when King Martin I of Aragon requested sobressades from Sicily.
That predates anything resembling modern ‘nduja by quite a margin, but it doesn’t necessarily make the Italian connection wrong. What it suggests instead is that both foods may have emerged from a much older Mediterranean tradition of preserving pork, with techniques and recipes traveling along with the people who moved around the region.
And people moved around this region a lot.
Sicily became part of the Crown of Aragon in the late 13th century. Mallorca and Valencia were also part of the Aragonese world. In the 15th century, Alfonso V of Aragon conquered the Kingdom of Naples, which included Calabria.
Suddenly, looking at Mallorca and Calabria as two completely separate culinary worlds doesn’t make much sense.
Modern borders are terrible guides to Mediterranean food history.
Today we look at a map and see Spain on one side of the Mediterranean and Italy on the other. For centuries, however, people, ships, ingredients, languages, recipes, and cooking techniques moved constantly between these places. Political borders changed repeatedly, while the sea connected communities that can look surprisingly distant on a modern map.
I’ve written before about some of the unexpected historical connections between eastern Spain and southern Italy, and sobrasada appears to be another delicious example.
Rather than saying that sobrasada descended directly from ‘nduja, or vice versa, it’s probably safer to think of them as culinary cousins whose ancestors were traveling around the Mediterranean long before anyone worried about whether a sausage was Spanish or Italian.
Then America Changed the Sausage
There’s another wrinkle: the medieval sobrasada wouldn’t have been red. It probably couldn’t have been.
The peppers used to make paprika are native to the Americas and didn’t arrive in Europe until after Columbus. When paprika was incorporated into Mallorcan sausage-making, it created the distinctive color and flavor that we now associate with sobrasada.
Which means that today’s sobrasada is itself a little edible history lesson.
Start with European pork-preserving traditions, move them around the Mediterranean through trade, migration, conquest, and settlement, then introduce an ingredient from the Americas and allow a few centuries of local adaptation.
Eventually you get the reddish-orange sausage sitting in our refrigerator.
Food history is rarely tidy. That’s what makes it fun.
What Do You Actually Do With It?
ready to go
Our first experience was a simple one: spread on a little round of bread, grilled, and eaten as a pincho. This is still one of our favorite ways to eat it, although sometimes we add a little Manchego or Idiazabal cheese, too.
But once sobrasada became a permanent resident of the refrigerator, we started experimenting.
We’ll often just spread a little raw on a piece of bread and nosh on it as part of a charcuterie dinner.
It’s also excellent mixed into scrambled eggs. You don’t need much. A few small pieces melt into the eggs as they cook, spreading paprika, pork fat, and a little spice throughout the whole thing. I saw a sobrasada and onion quiche at a little café the other day, and I was very sorry that I wasn’t actually hungry at the time.
And then there’s paella.
Now, before anyone in Valencia begins composing an angry email, I should make something perfectly clear: I already know that the thing I make at home isn’t authentic Valencian paella. We’ve established this previously, and I’m at peace with it.
But one of the things I sometimes do with my decidedly non-authentic paella is put little pieces of sobrasada on top near the end of cooking. They soften and begin to melt into the rice.
Authentic? Absolutely not.
Delicious? Absolutely. I regret nothing.
How Did We Miss This?
That’s still the part that puzzles me.
We’re not unfamiliar with the territories of the former Kingdom of Aragon. We’d been to Barcelona. We’d been to Valencia. We’d spent enough time eating our way around Spain that you’d think sobrasada would have crossed our path somewhere.
Maybe it did and we simply didn’t notice it.
But that’s one of the differences between visiting a place and actually living there. When you’re visiting, you’re naturally drawn toward the things you already associate with the country. You eat the foods you’ve heard about. You order the specialties you’ve been told not to miss.
Living somewhere is different. Eventually you start noticing the ordinary things. The jar on the supermarket shelf. The unfamiliar ingredient at the market. The thing on top of somebody else’s pincho that makes you wonder, “What’s that?”
And sometimes you try it.
A couple of years later, it’s simply something you always have in the refrigerator. That’s one of my favorite things about living here.
We’re still discovering Spain, one sausage at a time.
For what it’s worth – I invented a new recipe the other night, baked chicken with sobrasada – it was delicious!