Burns Night January 25, 2011

[Peter the eater]

Robbie Burns Day comes at the perfect time each year. End of January, freezing outside, it's time for a hearty feast of whisky and offal. For me, it's not about the poetry.

Who is celebrating, and how?

FYI here are two earlier topics from 2005 and 2009

[boondocker]

we do a big dinner at my club every year. haggis, clapshot, scotch eggs etc. chef parades the haggis around then they all today the haggis before they stab it with a dagger

[OnigiriFB]

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggis! *said with a Scots woman's accent* mind ya now!

[Peter the eater]

This is precisely the time of year I get excited about making a worthy haggis from scratch.

Then I remember I can't get my hands on a good ox bung or sheep lungs. Then I wonder about substitutions and reinterpretations. Then I fantasize about veggie haggis, and then I reaffirm that such a thing is beyond oxymoronic and completely misses the point.

Here's a pictorial that's not to be missed:Tim Hayward's step-by-step Haggis

[Mjx]

How are the flavour and texture of haggis (I read the description at the end of the step-by-step, but I'd love to hear more views)? This is something I've been curious about making/trying, but I've never even had an opportunity to try haggis; I briefly toyed with the idea of trying out a tinned one I saw at Meyers's of Keswick, then rejected the idea, since this is not likely the sort of thing that improves with tinning (they have a vegetarian version, too). I'm surmising that it must be like a cross between meatloaf and a coarsely-textured sausage. Please describe! If it's tasty I'd like to give it a go, and if there is enough whiskey going around, I could probably get this past my boyfriend without too many questions about the ingredients.

Edited January 19, 2011 by Mjx (log)

[ChrisTaylor]

It's pretty much a coarse meat loaf, yeah. Tastes pretty much like that, too. Not bad ... but nothing to get too excited about. Probably worth hunting some down at a gourmet butcher or something rather than making it unless you already know you like it--it's a lot of effort to go to, sourcing all the ingredients and such.