Trying the dreaded haggis...

1 December 2013

People joke about how bad food is in Scotland and they always use haggis as the ultimate disgusting example. I documented our first experience with haggis below. I don't want to give away the punchline, but I said "first" and not "only"!

I guess I should begin by clarifying that haggis is NOT a Scottish animal, as 33% of American visitors to Scotland seem to think. Although the idea of a funny little animal with legs on one side longer than the other so it can run quickly on the hills (although only in one direction) is kind of cute :) Here is an article on the Haggi Scotii, in case you want to learn more about the elusive creatures.



We didn't go out and hunt our haggis. Instead, we bought a haggis at the grocery store. It is ubiquitous and not terribly expensive. This is not something just eaten at holidays, but something that people seem to eat year-round, although it is traditionally associated with Burns Night. I hear the best haggis comes from a good butcher shop, so we will have to try that next time. The ingredient list is a bit daunting at first (I am pretty sure I have never eaten anything before where the first ingredient was "lamb lung"), but it makes sense to use all parts of the animal and I hear that organs are healthy for you. My brain thinks haggis is a good idea - although I suppose we still need to hear from the taste buds!

Here's what it looked like when we pulled it out of the outer packaging:

Nico, I think we're supposed to cook it first :) 

We chose to boil it (45 min), but it can also be prepared in the oven (90 min) or the microwave (5 min!). Originally, the haggis was cooked in actual sheep's stomach. Although the casing that it comes in now appears to be relatively sturdy, it can apparently burst if you boil it too strongly.

Boiling the haggis. Interesting fact: if we had purchased two of them, I don't know whether we would have two haggis or two haggises or two haggii. There does not seem to be a consensus on the plural of this food...

When it was done, we made a sauce to go with it (mustard & whisky cream sauce) and did our best to dig in. It was rather attached to the covering, but once we got that off, it was the consistency of a dry corned beef hash and it kind of looked like a little, dark meatloaf.

All cooked! It looked like a little balloon that was ready to pop. I thought stabbing it with a knife might be fun, but it was a rather unsatisfying lack of explosion. 

To answer the question that everyone is thinking: Did we like it? YES! It was rich (another main ingredient is fat), but good. We won't be having it every day, but I enjoyed it and look forward to trying it from other places. It's hard to describe the taste - no overwhelming flavors stand out. It's nicely mixed and seasoned to complement the different animal parts used. This is by far less disgusting than many other foods I've tried and I will just say that I think haggis does not deserve its current place as the stereotypical bad Scottish food.

Yum!

One more step completed on the road to becoming true Scottish residents :)