Haggis our national Scottish food dish.

 

Haggis is the traditional Scottish meal but not the most popular in fact many Scots turn their nose at idea of eating it.

 

 

Robert Burns our national poet wrote a poem to the haggis referring to it as “the Chieftain o’ the Pudding race”. Many say that if it wasn’t for that Address to the Haggis poem few people outside of Scotland and Scottish culture would even have heard of the dish. Even although Rabbie Burns died in 1796 the toast to the Haggis is still said throughout the world particularly on Burns Night 25th January of each year. The same section of the website includes a template menu for those looking to organise their own Burns Night supper. The menu template includes the Selkirk Grace our famous Scottish Grace.

 

 

On less formal occasions such as almost every night of the week all year round most Scots COULD buy what is referred to as a haggis supper. This is simply deep fried haggis with chips (outside of Scotland “chips” may be called French fries) and sold mainly as a take-away meal along with Haggis burgers. You can also buy the haggis in many supermarkets although numbers available on the shelf do seem to increase in mid January then fall away again when sales tend to decrease. So what is that makes our Scottish Haggis special?

 

 

Ask a Scot and they will tell you a Haggis is a small animal with its two left legs shorter than the right legs. Females have the short leg on the right so you tell them apart easier! Charles Darwin would have been able to point to this survival of the fittest theory and show scientifically that the shorter legs on one side allows them to run faster round the sides of steep hills in order to escape larger animals like man. Many tourists are very disappointed when they are unable to book on Haggis hunting expeditions at local travel agents.

 

 

But joking apart this food is traditionally made up of mainly the cheapest parts of a sheep so it was always particularly popular amongst the poorer people of the land.By tradition the ingredients are mixed from several different meats including the heart, liver and lungs (the latter is often called lights) together with some mutton, onion, suet fat and arrange of spices and herbs to local taste and custom. After mixing it will be placed inside a sheep’s stomach as a lining before being boiled and served usually with neeps (turnip) and boiled potato.

 

 

Today you will also find the sheep’s stomach has been replaced with an artificial cellulose casing and several vegetarian versions of the haggis are being made available in supermarkets.

 

 

Note it will be almost impossible to get the true traditional haggis in some countries for example the USA it is not possible to sell lung for human consumption. If you want to know more about this traditional Scottish dish please come to our Scottish culture website ScottishJerk.com

 

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