Scotland: Haggis

As January 25th draws near and Burns Night starts to approach, a lot of people with Scots ancestry start thinking about haggis.

There are, of course, any number of people who will run screaming in the opposite direction at the very mention of the word, freaked out by vague images of unmentionable wobbly organ meats. Well, to each his or her own.

Haggis is simply an outsized country sausage, made -- as country sausages tended to be in previous centuries -- out of the parts of various animals which rich, snooty or fashionably squeamish people were too highfalutin' to be caught eating, no matter how good it tasted. Haggis includes the "pluck" of an animal -- its liver, heart and lungs: from this usage comes the adjective "plucky", meaning someone who has (surprise) guts. The phrase "liver and lights" (see also "I'll punch his lights out") is also associated with haggis, the lights being the lungs.

Haggis also usually involves something to bulk the meat content out -- usually suet and oats or oatmeal -- and is seasoned with onions, stock, salt and various spices. The meats having been cleaned, trimmed, and chopped, and mixed together with the oatmeal, some stock, and the various seasonings, the whole business is then packed into a casing. Traditionally this would have been a sheep's stomach: nowadays it's as likely to be an artificial casing of some kind. The haggis is then ready to be cooked. This means simmering it slowly for two or three hours in water or stock.

At a Burns Night ceremony, the haggis is served forth with great ceremony, often accompanied into the dining room by the skirl of pipes. It is courteously saluted with a recitation of Burns's great Address to a Haggis before being sliced up and served with the traditional accompaniments -- neeps and tatties (mashed turnips and potatoes), and Scotch whiskey... often quite a lot of it, sometimes used as a distraction by those who like Robert Burns more than they like the haggis.

Seriously, it's not so terrible. Visitors to Scotland who visit a well-provided breakfast buffet at their hotel are likely to find sliced haggis there along with the bacon and fried mushrooms and other traditional Scots breakfast foods. It's particularly good fried (as so many things tend to become in Scotland, sometimes without warning, or indeed without any detectable reason. Whose idea was the deep-fried Mars Bar?). If anything, it's a little bland, and a dash of Tabasco does it no harm at all. Possibly this is why "designer" haggises, such as haggises based on smoked venison, are starting to turn up. There are also vegetarian haggises available.)

Click on "read more" for details on how to order a haggis for your Burns Night, and how to deal with it after you've got it.

...If you're thinking of conducting a Burns Night and have been having trouble locating a haggis locally, you will probably be happy to know that there are numerous places where you can order them online.

US / North American would-be haggis cooks can order the Chieftain of the Pudding Race at The McKean Family of Haggis website. (Apparently you must email them at scottishhaggis@maine.rr.com.) You should note, however, that the USDA has decided that sheep's lungs/lights are not fit for human consumption (and in the US, they may not be), so any haggis imported into the US from the UK will be missing this ingredient.

UK and European readers can order the haggis online from a number of places. One is the McKean family website mentioned above (though EuroCuisineLady wishes to warn you about the extremely persistent pipe music on the site's homepage -- the music keeps restarting itself no matter how many times you shut it off).

Another good-looking source for UK readers is Blackface.co.uk: their haggis comes with the endorsement of River Cottage's famous Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. There is also the award-winning haggis from Findlays of Portobello, which has British TV chef Ainsley Herriot as its champion.

Also good for UK and European Union readers is Scottish Food Overseas, featuring haggises from MacSweens of Edinburgh.

For those of you who live near a cooperative butcher and can actually acquire the necessary bits and pieces yourselves, the BBC offers this recipe for haggis from scratch. Additionally, Tom Kreitzberg's haggis page has a number of recipes, suggested cookbooks, and other info.

...On the lighter side, don't miss the Scotsman newspaper's Haggis Hunt pages, including the Haggisclopedia. (Not to mention the HaggisCams.)

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