Haggis and Irn Bru

Before this trip I’ve been referring to Scotland as land of Haggis and Kilts. Well, within three hours of our arrival in Glasgow I could securely say check√ to both. Our first kilt sighting was within minutes of boarding the bus to the hotel and kilts were a common site for the remainder of the trip. While “Land of Haggis & Kilts” would be apt “Land of Haggis and Irn Bru” more correctly describes my Scotland experience. Both haggis and Irn Bru are uniquely Scottish.

Haggis, the Scottish national dish per se, is a mixture of liberally spiced offal cooked in a sheep’s stomach, essentially a sausage. Irn Bru (pronounced Iron Brew) is a orangey – vanilla (to my taste) carbonated soda that is said to be a terrific hangover remedy. They have absolutely nothing in common and would not be advisable to consume together but both come from this land.

When you inquire about Haggis you might be told that it’s primeval, fabulous creature which lives in the forests and is difficult to shoot because it outsmarts hunters. Sounds rather like the Loch Ness legend, doesn’t it? Apparently it’s limbs are shorter on one side making it perfectly adapted to run around the hills at a steady altitude. A haggis always runs clockwise so it’s easiest to catch if you intercept it running the opposite direction. See what all that whisky can do to a population?

This is the reality:

Haggis
(Traditional Recipe)

Set of sheep’s heart, lungs and liver (cleaned)
One sheep’s stomach
3 cups finely chopped beef suet
One cup medium ground oatmeal
Two medium onions, finely chopped
One cup beef stock
One teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
One teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon mace

Trim off any excess fat and sinew from the sheep’s intestine and discard windpipe. Place in large pan, cover with water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for at least an hour until tender. Drain and cool.

Finely chop meat and combine in large bowl with suet, oatmeal, onions, stock, salt, pepper, nutmeg and mace. Mix well. Stuff mixture into stomach, filling just over halfway. Press out air and tie ends tightly with string leaving room for mixture to expand while cooking so stomach will not burst.

Place into a large pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and immediately reduce heat and simmer, covered, for three hours. Avoid boiling vigorously to avoid bursting the skin. Serve hot with champit tatties and bashit neeps (mashed potatoes and turnips).



Haggis is made and sold all year round by Scottish butchers but the pinnacle of haggis consumption is on New Year’s Eve (Hogmanay) or Jan. 25th’s Burns Night. Burns Night is the celebration of poet Robert S. Burns birthday. His poem, To a Haggis, is part of a solemn ceremony. The bearer of the haggis, the bearer of the whisky and a few pipers process into the room and the poem is recited.

Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face
Great Chieftan o’ the Puddin’ race,
Aboon them a ye’ tak your place
Painch, tripe or thairn:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace
As lang’s my arm.

…and so it goes for seven more stanzas. Undecipherable gibberish for some but pure genius for others. My opinion falls somewhere in the middle. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, Burns also wrote a well-known New Year’s Eve poem, Auld Lang Syne.

I sampled venison haggis, haggis rillettes, haggis pakoras, and plain ol’ haggis with neeps & tatties (turnips and potatoes). Each time the flavor was distinct. I suspect there are as many ways to prepare haggis as there are cooks in Scotland. For a non-meat eater such as myself to embrace this dish was a bit of a surprise to my husband, but hey, when in Rome… right. I confess to truly enjoying it every time. In these days of globalization and a Starbucks on every corner, it’s really a treat to experience something unique to a culture. The act that it’s also downright tasty helped tremendously too.

Then there was the Irn Bru. I drank Diet Irn Bru (sadly in a silver can, not the more picturesque orange can of the regular Irn Bru) on a few occasions and would look for it again. Scotland’s Irn Bru and Peru’s Inca Kola are supposedly the only two local soft drinks that outsell Coca-Cola in their home markets. The soft drinks in question, Irn Bru and Inca Kola, share a remarkably similar flavor, a caffeine-rich fluorescent fizz that has spawned a national obsession. The two countries also boast cute shaggy animals to call their own, Highland Cattle and Alpaca, respectively.

Irn Bru (originally known as Iron Brew - there goes that language thing again!) has been made in Scotland since 1901 by the Barr family company. Amazingly enough it does contain iron: listed at the very end of the ingredient list is 0.002% ammonium ferric (III) citrate. Don't know how much good that will do you, but from the advertising, apparently quite a lot

Where we had haggis:

Ubiquitous Chip, Glasgow This restaurant was a popular choice a few blocks from our West End hotel where we stayed on the night of our arrival and I was thrilled that they had venison haggis on the menu. Of course I selected it while John looked on dubitably. It was served breaded and fried with greens. The dumplings were large and meaty and the flavors somewhat gamey but pleasingly non-distinct. Perhaps it was my jet-lagged palate that was non-distinct. Neverth-less I was pleased with myself and for the opportunity to experience haggis so quickly into the trip. The rest of the meal did not disappoint either.
http://www.ubiquitouschip.co.uk/

Howie’s, Edinburgh’s West End Howie’s is a small chain, boasting four restaurants in Edinburgh, one in Aberdeen and one in St. Andrew’s. Again it was Fodor’s recommended but additional internet searching corroborated the recommendation. John & I both had the Haggis Rillettes to start and were not disappointed. I had no information about exact ingredients but assume it was sheep. The pungent meaty flavor had a slightly sweet taste that was complemented by a vinegary onion chutney and greens with mustard seed dressing. Yeah for haggis!
www.howies.co.uk

Jackson’s on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile The stack of haggis was topped with tatties and served with a whisky reduction. This was the spiciest haggis yet. I could detect pepper and nutmeg. The truest unadulterated haggis flavor. Jacksons’ used to get their haggis from McSweeney’s but now has a new source which the waiter did not reveal. He says he prefers this but apparently McSweeney’s is an area favorite.
www.jacksons-restaurant.co.uk

Mister Singh’s India, Glasgow’s City Center Upscale Indian Food served by waiters in kilts: it’s difficult to go wrong. The haggis pakoras were tasty but it was the rest of the menu that I’d return for.
http://www.mistersinghsindia.com/

The breakfast buffets at our Hilton hotels generally had haggis which I enjoyed with scrambled eggs and porridge.

My overall experience dining in Scotland was terrific. Several sources were helpful in ferreting out our dining options but one of the best was the May 2004 issue of Bon Appétit Magazine (thank you Brighid!) Regrettably we were not able to visit all of the fabulous restaurants that were featured but the entire issue is filled with information on all the Scotland Cuisine entails. Fodor’s Scotland steered me in the right direction, but nothing beats a specific recommendation!