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The Haggis Thread

Another haggis contest:

Battle to be fastest haggis eater

Competitors from across the globe are set to take part in the World Haggis Eating Championship, in Perthshire.

Whoever gets through 1lb of the Scottish dish in the fastest time will be named the winner, taking away a cup and a bottle of whisky.

Last year's event was won by Mick Lowe, from Fife, but he faces a challenge from contestants from Australia, New Zealand and the US and other Scots.

The championship is being held as part of the 125th Birnam Highland Games.

It features the traditional haggis - made from sheep innards, oatmeal, and spices - although organisers may add vegetarian versions in future.

'Quite a mouthful'

One of the main challenges is expected to come from dentist Todd Kamena, the son of the mayor of Livermore, in California.

He has been trying to claim the title for the past three years and has promised not to stop until he wins.

Event organiser Bob Lindsay told the BBC Scotland news website it was not an easy contest.

He said: "It's a plate of haggis, with a plastic knife and fork and everybody who has entered sits down at the big table.

"It's quite difficult because it's plastic knives and forks and the plastic sometimes breaks.

"It's also quite a mouthful - they are offered a can of lager to help digest it - and most of them do take that up."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tay ... 588498.stm
 
I got the image of Haggis as something awful only people on the british and irish islands would be able to eat. And it doesn't help that USA forbade import of Haggis in 1989.

In some western parts of Norway they serve sheep brain as a dish, Smalahove (grilled heads of sheep). Would never taste that neither.

Edit: Photo of Smalahove
 
We had a lovely offal thread before*, where some of us confessed our liking for liver, kidneys and lights!

I suspect they get into our grub anyway in disguised ways. But, as I recall, people who try the supposedly dreaded Haggis tend to like it. I do - it's probably the best cold-weather food I know - those Scots knew a thing or two. Great stuff! :D

*In Chat, I'm afraid and it seems to have slipped over the cliff. I think it contained my memories of UCP, tripe, cow-heels and elder.

Don't think Elder (Udder to you) is going to be on the menu these days but I have seen all the udders (kick him) on Bury Market.
 
The offal truth about American haggis
By Jon Kelly, BBC News Magazine, Washington DC

Traditional Scottish haggis is banned in the United States. With Burns Night looming, how do fans satisfy their taste for oatmeal and offal?

For aficionados, it is the "great chieftain o' the pudding-race".
To sceptics, however, it is a gruesome mush of sheep's innards - and for decades American authorities have agreed.
Authentic Scottish haggis has been banned in the United States since 1971, when the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) first took a dim view of one of its key ingredients - sheep's lung.

While millions of people around the world will enjoy, or endure, a Burns Night helping on 25 January, those in the US who want to celebrate Scotland's national bard in the traditional manner are compelled to improvise.

Some choose to stage offal-free Burns suppers, and for most people not raised in Scotland, the absence of the dish - comprising sheep's "pluck" (heart, liver and lungs) minced with onion, oatmeal, suet and spices, all soaked in stock and then boiled in either a sausage casing or a sheep's stomach - might be no great hardship.

But for many expat Scots and Scots-Americans, the notion of Burns Supper without haggis is as unthinkable as Thanksgiving without turkey.
According to custom, the haggis should be paraded into the room with a bagpiper before Burns' poem Address to a Haggis is recited and the dish is served as the main course.
To purists, removing the haggis from the equation, or replacing it with vegetarian version, is heresy.

"It would be difficult to do an address to the chicken," complains the Spectator's Alex Massie, who each January uses his column to rail against US haggis prohibition.

At one time it might have been a marginal issue, but a Scottish heritage movement of Americans eager to connect with their Caledonian ancestry has been in the ascendency since the first Tartan Day was celebrated in New York in 1982.
Native-born Scots may cringe at plaid-draped Americans proclaiming kinship with ancient clan chiefs, but Highland games across the US can attract crowds of up to 40,000 and Scottish societies exist in virtually every state and major city. In 2008, President George W Bush officially proclaimed 6 April as Tartan Day on which "the contributions of Scottish Americans" should be celebrated.

Against this backdrop, a mini-industry has emerged with American firms from Texas to New England manufacturing lung-free haggis for the US domestic market each January.
Retired healthcare executive Ronald Grant Thurston, 76, started producing McKean's Haggis in Bangor, Maine, after a visit to Glasgow, the birthplace of his wife Isabella.
He uses imported Scottish cereals and US-reared offal - British beef and sheep products having been banned from import since 1989 - and insists the product is none the worse for the absence of its missing ingredient.
"As an American who's not used to eating lungs, it's an improvement," he says.

Critics, however, complain that this Transatlantic version can never match the authentic Scottish product.
Massie, who staged numerous American Burns Suppers during his five years as The Scotsman's Washington correspondent, concedes the US versions often "aren't bad".
But he says their texture tends to resemble that of pate more than the haggis he grew up with in Scotland.
"Without the sheep's lung it's not authentic," he says. "It's too sausagey. It lacks the lightness the lungs help create."

Scottish politicians, eager to encourage both exports and tourism, have led efforts to overturn the ban. Holyrood's Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead has repeatedly lobbied Washington to reverse its policy.
As it stands, however, lungs are "considered an inedible item" in the US, says a spokesman for the Food Safety and Inspection Service.

And it would be difficult to argue that the US is currently clamouring for haggis on the shelves of its superstores. The market for Thurston's haggis - expat Scots, Burns enthusiasts and Highland games attendees - is passionate but somewhat niche.

A 2003 survey suggested that a third of US visitors to Scotland believed the haggis was an animal. Nearly a quarter thought they could catch one. 8)

Even on Burns Night, getting Americans to eat the most Scottish of meals is no easy task, explains Paisley-born Jim Short, 76, who attends a Burns Supper in LaGrange, Georgia, organised by The Order of the Tartan, a local Scottish heritage society.
The majority of attendees are US-born, however, and out of deference to their palates, haggis is not served as the main course.
"We're lucky if some of them take more than a mouthful," laments Short, who once had three cans of tinned haggis confiscated by customs officials on arrival at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport.

After the US-manufactured pudding is piped in and the Address is delivered, a helping is left in the centre of each table, for those brave enough to nibble on crackers. The main course might be beef, or cottage pie.

Of course, American culinary culture is far removed from Scotland's.
Jo Macsween, director of Edinburgh-based haggis manufacturer Macsween, observes that the US does not share the tradition of "nose to tail" cooking, in which no part of the animal is wasted.
"I think Americans tend to be bit fussier about their meat - they'd rather have steak and prime cuts," says Macsween, who briefly lived in Boston, Massachusetts, after leaving university.
But she notes that US visitors invariably sample haggis on trips to Scotland and are usually pleasantly surprised at the result.

For Massie, it is a "grotesque double standard" that French Andouille sausage - which traditionally comprises the intestines of a pig - is permitted on American shores and afforded culinary respectability while haggis is not.
He believes the answer lies in liberating haggis from the confines of the Burns Supper and celebrating it as a delicacy in its own right.
"Its qualities can be overshadowed by the pomp and ceremony of the event," he says. "But actually, it's a very fine dish."

If all else fails, he suggests, "it shouldn't be too difficult to organise a cross-border smuggling operation" to bring the authentic product to US palates. :twisted:

It may be more difficult, however, to help Americans love what Burns fondly termed the "gushing entrails" of the indigenous haggis.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21128089

I had haggis yesterday! (Wetherspoons are offering it all week in the run-up to Burn's Night.)
 
More on the haggis, and different ways to serve it:

Haggis 'not just for Burns Night'
By Anne Gibson, BBC Scotland

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/0/21046338


"Outside Edinburgh, London is the next biggest haggis eating city in the UK”
Jo Macsween
Director, Macsween of Edinburgh

...

Jo Macsween calls haggis eaten with mashed turnip and mashed potato (neeps and tatties) the "holy trinity".

But these days it seems people are becoming more adventurous.
"I think people are seeing it as a product you can put in a roll and eat for breakfast," says Ms Macsween, "or use with Tex Mex recipes - or Tex Mac, as I call it."

Ms Burrell says she uses it in unusual ways too.
"We do a canapé with haggis wrapped up in filo pastry with a plum dipping sauce, which is nice because the acidity in the plum just cuts through the fattiness of the haggis.

"We've also used it mixed with minced venison and wrapped it round an egg to make a haggis and venison scotch egg, which is delicious as well."

There are other ways to enjoy haggis with its traditional accompaniments, Ms Burrell explains.
"You could take the haggis out of its wrapper and flatten it down into a dish.
"Haggis, neeps and tatties do go incredibly well together but you could do it layered up so that it's something that's ready to just pop in the oven and heat through."

etc...
 
rynner2 said:
For aficionados, it is the "great chieftain o' the pudding-race".
Or, as Fred Macaulay claims, it is translated into German as "Fuhrer of the sausage people"
 
There's a Scottish barmaid in my local - found out tonight she's never tried haggis! :shock:
 
I'm a 55 year old Scot and I only tried it a couple of years ago when I was invited to a Burns Supper. Wasn't bad as long as I didn't think about the ingredients.
 
Tried haggis once and quite liked it.
 
I have one in the fridge* and though I missed the proper night, I am happy to raise a touch of Glans Friskie to Burns and all poets! :)

*It's one that has no gluten warnings. Probably just horse lungs and koala skin, then . :cross eye
 
ChrisBoardman said:
It's okay if it's proper

but not the wetherspoons version

Yes, it has to be freshly caught wild haggis or it doesn't taste right.

A few years back I was walking through Princess Street Gardens in Edinburgh with a friend. As we passed a group of tourists a squirrel ran past. My mate pointed and shouted "HAGGIS!"

We were just about deafened by multiple cameras clicking. :D
 
Had no idea that haggis was banned in the U.S.
*breathes sigh of relief*

That's got to be the only reason my proud Scottish-American in-laws haven't forced me to try it!
 
I was only recently party to a delicious haggis themed dinner and wondered about the origins. Seems that our haggis was allegedly first described in a recipe 132 years later than... ...in an English cook book. Obviously some mistake there, eh....
 
Does Scotland have a bank holiday which the rest of the UK doesn't?
 
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National Haggis hunting day
Is that the left hand or the right hand Haggis? I was told they have legs on one side shorter than the other so they can stay upright on the mountains. This was a Scottish gentleman in Blair Atholl. Surely he must have been speaking the truth.
 
Is that the left hand or the right hand Haggis? I was told they have legs on one side shorter than the other so they can stay upright on the mountains. This was a Scottish gentleman in Blair Atholl. Surely he must have been speaking the truth.
There are two distinct breeds the shorter left legs and the shorter right legs. One type moves anti clockwise on the hills and one clockwise. If one tries to breed with the other they have to turn round and their shorter legs will be on the wrong side causing them to topple and roll down the hill.

https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/usfeatures/haggis/wildhaggis.html
 
I dont care; they both taste great.

Me and Dad love them...and its grand they are freely availible even in southern England now.

My local pub does a Burns night with a piper and all.

(The deep fried mars bars were discretley spat out...)
 
I always wonder just who the doner was...:eek:
 
My Fortean researches have proven fruitful: I have discovered a glass plate print of the last surviving herd of domesticated haggis on the Hebridean island of Socharach in 1880:

Haggis-domestic-01.jpg


The alpha bull of the herd - Sèabhas - is the large animal centre rear, in front of his proud owner Murdo McAmadan.

maximus otter
 
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