…for haggis.

I know a lot of people who don’t like haggis but have never tried it.

I don’t, however, know anyone who has tried it but doesn’t like it.

Let’s get this out the way from the start – ever eaten sausages from the supermarket? Ever eaten a hot dog?  Ever eaten those chicken shitey bitey bits or whatever those reconstituted chicken slime things are called?  Ever eaten in Maccas?  Answer yes to any of the above and you have eaten far far worse than anything that’s been near a haggis.

So what, I hear you ask, is haggis…?  Some say it is a wee elusive and cunning beastie hunted in the highlands of Scotland, with two legs shorter than the other two from standing on the side of mountains – this means it can only run one way around the mountain, so to catch one you simply run in the other direction.  Actually this is a fallacy…all it’s legs are the same length, but it likes to confuse it’s predators by standing with half its legs in a bog, hence the misunderstanding.  However, others say haggis is minced up sheep’s pluck (heart, liver, lungs, kidney), oats and pepper stuffed in a sheep’s stomach or ox bung.  Whoa, whoa – don’t turn your nose up, I refer you to the paragraph above.  Think a sheep’s stomach is not a great container?  What do you think a sausage skin is?  Yup, pigs intestine.  Anyway – if you haven’t eaten haggis, you haven’t lived, and you might be surprised to hear that it’s actually quite spicy.  When I first made haggis, I was surprised to hear that nearly all of that spice comes from pepper – yup, plain and simple black and white pepper!

Scotland doesn’t have the best food rep in the world, but you’ve gotta love the wee beastie.  Scotland’s food mantra is basically – “If we can deep fry it, we will.  If we can’t deep fry it, we’ll just deep fry it for longer!”  They deep fry everything from mars bars (actually quite nice), to jam sandwiches (actually very nice), to fish and chips (which they seem to have forgotten how to do well), to frozen pizza (pretty fucking bad), to haggis.  Deep frying doesn’t bring out the best in haggis unless you’ve had 15 pints.  No, you really need to do it the traditional way (boiled), or the better way (fried), or the best way (roasted).

The traditional way to eat haggis is with neeps and tatties: boil the haggis in the skin, and then eat it with mashed potato and mashed turnip (or swede) and a wee slug of whiskey poured over.  Also often eaten for brekkie, just fry up a half inch slice for a full Scottish of haggis, black pudding, eggs, beans, sausage and, quite often chips (it’s Scotland: chips with everything) – the frying gives you nice caramelisation and crispy bits.  My favourite way though…take a chicken thigh or two (or even a whole chicken) and stuff it with haggis and roast it – lots of crispy caramelisation going on there…nom nom nom.  Serve with neeps and tatties and a little creamy whiskey sauce made from the chicken juices.

It has to be said, you don’t get much haggis outside of Scotland, and I’ve certainly never had a good one…more like dog food most of the time.  So now I live in Australia, there was no alternative but to make my own.  I went to the butcher and asked for a sheep’s pluck.  He just looked at me slightly bemused and said “Really?”.

“Yes, my friend, really.  I’m gonna make me some haggis!”

Turns out they don’t sell many sheep’s plucks – too gory apparently – but that makes it cheap and I made 14 haggis for about $8.  I saw a haggis in a butcher here once and they were asking $13 for one…just one!  And it was a crap one!  Well let me tell you sunshine, the ones I made were pretty damn spectacular, and this was backed up by some genuine bona-fide Scottish folk wearing kilts and tossing cabers and doing all things Scottish whilst eating my haggis.  We agreed they could have done with a bit more spice, so I’ll be adding extra pepper next time, but all in all an outrageous success!

Haggis – definitely one of my finer experimentations…full of flavour, versatile and cheap!  I might go into business making these things.  No no, I’m not kidding…I really might.

I’m going to post the recipe here for you really soon – I promise.