Be warned: haggis isn’t for the faint-hearted
A sheep’s or calf’s stomach, filled with offal, oatmeal, suet and herbs, and then steamed. Sounds delicious? Then you’re probably Scottish, because this is haggis, the national dish of the Highlands.
In 1786, the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote the poem ‘Address to a Haggis’, and that settled it once and for all: haggis and Scotland, they’re joined at the hip, er.. stomach. Haggis looks like a large, thick sausage, about the size of a rugby ball. It’s usually served with neeps and tatties, which are stewed turnips and potatoes, and a glass of single malt to wash it all down. And according to tradition, the haggis is cut open at the table with a sword or dagger.
Time for breakfast
In the eighteenth century, it made perfect sense to eat every bit of meat from a slaughtered animal. Why throw away a sheep’s stomach when you can also turn it into a delicious breakfast? But even today, you can order haggis in almost every restaurant in Scotland. How is that possible? According to the Scots, because it’s bloody delicious—as long as it’s made by a cook who knows what they’re doing.
Plucks and flight
Like Richard Dalgleish, the sous-chef at Gleneagles in Auchterarder. ‘The flavour is determined by the quality of the ingredients,’ he says. He makes his haggis with lamb, lungs and heart (in jargon: plucks and flight), plus a piece of lamb shoulder, ‘because that makes it meatier.’ Believe it or not, Gleneagles’ guests pay good money for it. The secret? Richard says it just has to look reasonably attractive. He tops the haggis with beautifully sliced carrots, a quenelle of mashed potato and some spring onion.
A Michelin-starred stomach
Haggis is even on the menu at The Kitchin (1 Michelin star). Chef Tom Kitchin, Scottish through and through, has created a more culinary version of it. ‘If you eat a plate of haggis, you need a week to recover,’ he says. ‘So I pickled the turnip, which tastes much fresher, and turned the potatoes into paper-thin fries.’ In summer, he makes a cannelloni filled with haggis, in a light broth.
Throwing away haggis
How did haggis get its funny name? The Scots tricked the rest of the world into believing that the haggis is a little creature with shorter legs on one side of its body than on the other, because it always walks high in the mountains. We don’t fall for that anymore, but (Scottish) research found that 33 percent of Americans believe it. One thing is true: every year, haggis hurling competitions are held, in which a haggis is thrown as far as possible from a whisky barrel—a regular fixture at the Highland Games. Just say you don’t like it very much.
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