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. Today over 210 years after the death of Robert Burns that poem is still said throughout the world especially on 25th January when we hold our Burns Night celebrations.

You will be able to find the full version of “Address to the Haggis” on our ScottishJerk.com website. There is also a sample format for those wanting to hold a Burns Night Dinner. 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. 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! Darwin explained this under the survival of the fittest theory by pointing out that this difference in leg length allowed them to run in circles around steep Scottish highland hills. Some travel agents will still try to sell tourists tickets for haggis hunting tours and then take them to the local butchers shop.

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.

To suit modern day tastes the sheep’s stomach is usually replaced with an artificial casing and vegetarian friendly ingredients will often replace the meat and offal.

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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