Jan
Haggis
I once went to Scotland about ten years ago, and was determined to eat the old and honored delicasy known as haggis! Hey, when in Rome, huh?
For those who are not familar, haggis, made the old way, was part of the Highland diet in Scotland. In those days, being poor and living off of the land, every part of the sheep was used, clothing, skins, bone, and of course, the meat. Since nothing was wasted, haggis was made with a boiled sheep stomach, filled with the innards and mixed with herbs and oats and boiled and baked again and again until it was tender enough (and safe enough) to eat! Sounds gross, huh? It was actually pretty good!
I made a toned down version of haggis years ago, using flour tortillas instead of sheep’s stomach, and most of the internal ingredients. Except I used beef instead of “innards”. It worked out pretty well! Of course, I didn’t tell people at first how I actually made it…then I had to, because no one was willing to try it otherwise! LOL
Although you can still get haggis made the traditional way, there are many variations of haggis that are not quite so harsh. Here is a sample recipe from Scotland Online:
METHOD
To make a modern haggis, the pluck (liver, heart, lights or lungs) is washed and put to boil until tender. When cool, the meat is chopped or minced finely and mixed with the oatmeal, onions, salt, pepper and spices. It’s then put again through a coarser mincer. The mixture is moistened, usually with meat gravy, put into a filler and pumped into the prepared natural, or artificial casings which are then sealed. The haggis is then cooked in boiling water for about an hour, depending on size, the mixture swells up to fill the skins, then it’s left to cool. An independent butcher specializing in haggis might make an annual 200 tons, while a large meat-processing company may make the same amount in a month. It is also sold tinned. The weight can vary from 75-100g/3-4oz (individual size) to 4-5kg/8-10lb ‘Chieftain’ haggis which would feed 20. An average over-the-counter haggis to feed a family of four is around 250g-500g/1/2-1lb.
Cooking and Serving
The safest way of reheating a whole cooked haggis is in the OVEN. Wrap it in foil, in its skin, and heat it through in the oven gas mark 4/180C/375F for 30 minutes per 250g/8oz haggis.
For reheating in a MICROWAVE, the outer casing should be removed. Allow approximately 8-10 minutes on high for 500g/1lb haggis.
Re-boiling in hot water is risky since the haggis may burst and does not make good soup.
Haggis without meat
A ’sweet’ meatless haggis recipe has been handed down through my family for four generations. It is something akin to the Hebridean Marag, a steamed pudding made with flour, oatmeal, beef suet, dried fruit, and a little sugar. Though the ingredients are the same, the sweet haggis is less solid, more crumbly in texture. Another mention of a similar meatless Scottish haggis is in Dorothy Hartley’s Food in England (1954) under the description of ‘Gold Belly’ which she describes as a version of an ‘English oatmeal pudding; Scotch mountain recipe’.
In 1984 an Edinburgh butcher, John Macsween, was challenged by Scottish poet Tessa Ransford to make a vegetarian haggis for the Burns Supper opening of the Scottish Poetry Library. After a number of experiments, he developed a recipe with kidney beans and nuts. The enthusiastic response from guests and press encouraged him to start making the meatless haggis commercially. The volume of production has increased steadily every year.
The Macsween meatless haggis is made with oatmeal, water, vegetable margarine, kidney beans, lentils, mixed nuts, carrots, turnip, onions, mushrooms, salt, pepper, spices, and is suitable for vegans. To make it, the lentils, black beans, onions and oatmeal are soaked in water overnight; the next day the mushrooms are washed, the turnips and carrots peeled and chopped and put through a fine mincer along with the black beans and mushrooms. The mixture then goes through a coarser mincer with the lentils, oatmeal and onions. It is seasoned, and melted margarine is added and mixed in. The mixture is then fed into a ‘filler’ which pumps it into the skins which are sealed and boiled in water.
