Sobrassada is made with a choice of pork loin, pork bacon (xuia), minced and mixed with paprika, salt and (in modern times) black pepper. Some makers also add cayenne pepper to the mixture and market it as picant, hot. Then the mixture is put into a pork intestine, and hung from a pole for some weeks until it is cured and fermented as the initial humidity is lost.. The string which is tied around the intestine can be used to differentiate between the hot and dolç (literally "sweet", though in this case meaning "not spicy") varieties, the red or red and white string being the hot one. Sobrassada is made with lean and fatty cuts of pork and its characteristic colour comes from the paprika used in making it, which is mixed with salt, pepper and the ground meat.  The curing time required is one month on average, but varies according to the size of the piece.

Small, thin sobrassadas are called llonganissa, and are made from the small intestine. Bigger and thicker ones are called cular or pultrums, and the largest type are huge pork bladders called bufetes.

Short history of sobrassada and Mallorquin penchant for pork

Other pork products typical from the cuisine of Mallorca are camaïot, veria negra and xuia (pancetta). After centuries of Muslim (non-pork) culture, Mallorca quickly returned to pork consumption in the Middle Age, with the key ingredient paprika added after the discovery of America in the 15th century. Sobrassada is thought to have originated and expanded, as a culinary concept, in the Catalan-controlled Western Mediterranean (Sicily, Balearic Islands, Sardinia) after the 14th century, as different forms of the same product persist in this region still today.

In a traditional Mediterranean diet, containing little meat, as Mallorca had until the 1950s, sobrassada and its affiliated pork sausages were usually the main and exclusive pork meat source for Mallorquins. Larger meat cuts like pork or lamb roasts, pork steaks or beef cuts were largely a festive dish, or restricted to the well-off. Even today dishes such as porcella rostida, a whole roasted suckling pig, are only served on special occasions.

This unique product is one of the islands' most famous sausages. It is still made all over the island and nowadays is registered under the Mallorcan Sobrassada geographical denomination.A second denomination of origin exists to differentiate sobrassada made from the island's black pork.