What is Haggis?

Question: What is Haggis?

Answer:

Haggis is the national dish of Scotland.

The Haggis was immortalized by the poet Robert Burns in his poem Address to a Haggis in the 18th century. The haggis is celebrated in Scotland and throughout the world on Burns Night every January 25th.

Haggis is eaten with Tatties (mashed potatoes) and Neeps (turnip or swede) alongside other Scottish favorites Cock-a-Leekie (vegetable) Soup and Crannachan, a dessert made from raspberry, toasted oatmeal and cream.

It is a wonderful, tasty dish which uses sheep’s offal (the bits nowadays often discarded; lungs, hearts, liver). The cooked minced offal is mixed with suet, oatmeal, seasoning and encased in the sheep’s stomach. Once stitched up, the stuffed stomach is boiled for up to three hours.

If you do feel you would like to make an attempt at making your own, step-by-step instructions can be found here. It's not something I have ever tried but with these instructions, I may give it a go.

If the thought of cooking the animal parts is off-putting, there are commercial haggis available, the best known (including a vegetarian version) from Charles MacSween & Son in Edinburgh.