Haggis in Edinburgh by Edinburgh Blog (licenced under CC 2.0 generic licence)

My second guest post is from Kirsten, who might be Germany’s biggest fan of Scottish food and culture. She’s spent a lot of time in my home country over the years and has, frankly, investigated our national dish a lot more closely than I have. Here she gives us the lowdown on how to make your own haggis…if you don’t happen to live in Scotland. Oh and by the way: this looks like a full-on meaty post but there’s a cracking recipe for vegetarian haggis in here too. Over to you, Kirsten…

The headline says it all: there must be thousands of exile Scots and Scotland lovers who fell in love with the national dish, haggis, but find it next to impossible to obtain it abroad. Any of the tinned stuff you can order online is as far from the real thing as the moon is from Glasgow.

Wild Haggis by StaraBlazkova (licenced under CC 3.0 Attribution Share-Alike licence)

Most people, when learning what is inside the original haggis in the first place, go “Yuck! How can you possibly eat this?” After all, you need the stomach bag, the heart, the lungs, the kidneys and the liver of a sheep as the main ingredients. In the past, that was all the poor crofters were allowed to keep after slaughtering. Well, in many countries, for example, in Germany where I live, there are similar poor peasants dishes: in the southwest, they make “Saumagen”, which literally means a pig’s stomach, so it is pretty much the same – just in a pork and potato version. Once people have tried a good butcher’s haggis (best with a nice whisky sauce), they fall in love with it. At least, this is what happened to my husband when we toured the Scottish highlands.

Back at home he wanted to make haggis for one of our whisky tastings and that was where the problem started. You find a lot of recipes on the Web, but it is impossible to buy a sheep’s stomach – not even from our Turkish butcher and he should know! So what to do? There are also recipes that suggest to create a giant meatloaf. We tried that once, it was okay but not the real thing. So I had a word with our local butcher who, fortunately, had spent some time in Ireland and England and had a good idea of what I was talking about. His solution was: to use a natural beef casing (in German: “Rinderbutte”). This is a part of the cow’s digestive tract; it is quite long and about four to five inches (10-12 cm) wide and serves as a perfect replacement of the original stomach bag. It is still used by butchers to make sausages and, let’s face it, haggis is nothing but a big sausage. That is what rescued our dream of making haggis and here it goes!

What you need:

  • 1 natural beef casing (or a sheep’s stomach bag)
  • 225 g shredded suet

Both of these ingredients you will best get from a butcher who does his own slaughtering, and you need to pre-order. Otherwise, contact your local slaughterhouse in good time to enquire about possibilities to get those things. Suet often comes in larger packages, but freezes well.

  • the kidneys and/or liver of a sheep/lamb
  • about 1 kg of minced lamb
  • 2 onions
  • 250g oatmeal
  • rosemary and thyme
  • salt and pepper
  • a darning needle and strong string

First of all, you need to water the beef casing for a couple of hours. It will become more elastic then. Place them in cold water in the morning and remove them in the afternoon when you start preparing.

In the meantime, prepare the stuffing: chop the liver and kidneys into very small pieces, chop the onion also into very small pieces and mix this all together with the suet and the minced lamb (your butcher will mince it for you), the herbs, and the oatmeal; add plenty of salt and pepper. Remove the beef casing from water. It can be quite long and you will have to cut it into two parts. The amount of ingredients is actually for two haggises – if you expect a larger party or if you like to freeze one (after cooking it). Make sure that one end of each half casing is closed: use needle and string to stich it up.

Fill your biggest pot with plenty of water and bring it to the boil. Fill the mixture into the casings – make sure you only fill them up to two thirds as during the cooking process the oatmeal will swell and the stuffing will enlarge in volume. Close the other end of each casing again using needle and thread. Then reduce the heat of the water – it should be simmering just under 100 °C and not boil as this might damage the casings. Place the haggises inside and put the lid on! If needed, you may have to add some more hot water. The pot should be big enough to allow the haggis to swim. Cook the haggis for two to three hours: use a needle or toothpick to check whether it is done. Remove the haggis from the pot and cut up the casing: inside you should have a nice firm sausage that can be cut into slices.

We like to serve it traditionally with “neeps” (turnips) and “tatties” (potatoes). Turnips are great if you chop them, boil them and add garlic butter, lemon juice and nutmeg. Mix it carefully, sprinkle some some parmesan cheese on top and place it under a hot grill for about five to ten minutes (or until the cheese is golden): in this case, you might not even need potatoes. Otherwise, the boiled turnips are mashed with nutmeg and lemon juice, and the boiled potatoes are mashed with butter, some yoghurt and chopped chives or spring onions.

Haggis needs sauce, and an easy to prepare whisky sauce is great to accompany it: chop some red onions (about four to five) and fry them gently in some oil. Add half a litre of vegetable stock, some balsamic vinegar, honey, salt and pepper and let the mixture reduce to half. Then add 5 cl of whisky (or more), make sure the sauce boils properly to take some of the alcohol out and let it simmer for a few minutes more.

If some of your guests happen to be vegetarian, then prepare the vegetarian version of haggis:

Use an oven-proof jar, grease it and line with some grease-proof paper. Boil about 200 g of red quinoa (which to my mind is the best substitute for minced meat anyway) in a pot with plenty of water (just follow instructions on the package) and drain it. Take the drained quinoa, mix it with some chopped mushrooms, 1 chopped onion, a handful of oatmeal, 2 tablespoons of butter, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper to taste. Fill it into the jar and bake in the oven at 180°C for about 30 minutes.