Name: Haggis (Sheep Offal and Toasted Oatmeal Boiled in a Casing)
Prep time: 1 h
Cook time: 5 h
Total time: 6 h
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: British
Ingredients: 400 g lamb heart; 200 g lamb liver; 400 g lamb shoulder or breast; 250 g beef suet; 250 g pinhead oatmeal; 2 onions; 400 ml cooking liquid; 20 g salt; 2 tbsp black pepper; 1 tsp mace or nutmeg; 1 tsp coriander seed; 0.5 tsp cayenne; 1 sheep stomach; 1 ox bung casing; 600 g swede; 600 g potatoes; 50 ml whisky

Ingredients

6servings

The filling
lamb heart400 g
lamb liver · keep it under a fifth of the meat or liver is all you taste200 g
lamb shoulder or breast · standing in for lung, whose sale for food is banned in many countries400 g
beef suet · chopped or grated; it must be solid at room temperature250 g
pinhead oatmeal · steel-cut. Rolled oats turn the whole thing to porridge250 g
onions · coarsely chopped2
cooking liquid · from boiling the offal — do not throw it away400 ml
Seasoning
salt20 g
black pepper · coarsely ground; this is a heavily peppered dish2 tbsp
mace or nutmeg1 tsp
coriander seed · toasted and ground1 tsp
cayenne0.5 tsp
The casing
sheep stomach · turned inside out, scrubbed with salt, soaked overnight1
ox bung casing · when a stomach is hard to get; a pudding basin under paper also works1
To serve
swede · called neeps in Scotland600 g
potatoes600 g
whisky · optional, for the sauce50 ml

Steps

Turn the stomach inside out, scrub it with coarse salt and soak it overnight in cold water. If you are using an ox bung casing, soak it for thirty minutes.
⏲ 30 min
Put the heart and shoulder into cold water, bring it up, then drop the heat and simmer for two hours. The liver is strong and cooks fast, so it goes in for the last twenty minutes only. Keep the cooking liquid — it goes back into the filling.
⏲ 120 min
While that simmers, toast the pinhead oatmeal in a dry pan over a medium-low heat until it smells nutty and has barely coloured. The surface moisture goes and the outside of each grain sets, so it takes up fat before it takes up water.
⏲ 8 min
Lift the meat out, let it cool, and chop it coarsely — the widest plate on a mincer, or a knife. Ground fine, the texture of the dish is gone.
⏲ 15 min
In a large bowl mix the meat, toasted oatmeal, onion, suet, salt and spices. Add the cooking liquid a little at a time until it is just moist. It must not be sloppy: the oatmeal takes up more as it boils.
⏲ 10 min
Fill the stomach only two thirds full — the oatmeal needs somewhere to swell. Press the air out and tie the opening tightly. Sundae has more on filling and tying a casing.
⏲ 15 min
Bring a large pot of water to the boil, lower the haggis in and drop the heat so it never boils hard. A rolling boil bursts the casing. Weight it under a plate so it stays submerged.
⏲ 5 min
After about thirty minutes, once the surface has set, prick it in several places to let the steam out. Then simmer it for three hours more, topping up with hot water as it falls.
⏲ 180 min
Lift it out, rest it ten minutes, set it on a dish and cut the casing open in a cross. Serve with mashed swede and potato, and a whisky cream sauce if you like.
⏲ 10 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Neeps and tatties: mashed swede and mashed potato. In Scotland neeps means swede, while in England the same word means turnip, which is a reliable source of confusion. Mashed potatoes applies here too — do not overwork them.
Burns Supper: on 25 January, Robert Burns’ birthday, the haggis is carried in behind a piper and the casing is cut open partway through a recitation of his Address to a Haggis, on the line “his knife see rustic Labour dight”. The ceremony did more to make this a national dish than the cooking did.
Vegetarian haggis: lentils, kidney beans, mushrooms and root vegetables with the same oatmeal and the same spicing. It is common in Scotland, and it is also evidence that most of what a haggis tastes of is oatmeal and pepper.
Haggis supper: battered, deep-fried and served with chips. Frying sets the outside, so it holds together better than the boiled version — which is exactly why it travels well in a paper bag.

Tips

Pinhead and rolled are not the same ingredient. Rolled oats have already been steamed and flattened, so they take up water fast and spread into paste. Pinhead oatmeal is the whole grain cut into two or three pieces, so each piece swells and stays a piece. The entire texture of this dish comes from that difference.
Why they are toasted. Dry heat drives off surface moisture and sets the outside of each grain (browning). In that state a grain takes up melted fat sooner than it takes up water, which is how it survives three hours of boiling without dissolving. Skip the pan and the same oatmeal gives a different result.
Keep the liver under a fifth. Liver is strong and turns chalky with long heat. Heart and muscle meat should be most of the weight, with liver as a background note.
The casing is a vessel, not a food. The stomach is not eaten — the whole thing is opened and the filling served out of it. That is the opposite of sundae, where the casing is part of what you eat.
Fry a spoonful of the mixture and taste it before you fill anything. Once it is boiling there is no adjusting it, and salt and pepper are the whole seasoning.
Simmer, never boil. The surface should barely tremble. A hard boil splits the casing and three hours are gone with it.
This is a fourth way of holding a filling together. Sundae uses blood, which sets like egg; weisswurst uses muscle protein drawn out by salt and emulsified; mititei uses bicarbonate for springiness. Haggis is the one that chooses not to bind at all.
It also sits opposite the dishes that burst their grain. Jeonbokjuk breaks rice on purpose so grain and liquid become one thing. Here the same kind of grain is kept whole from start to finish.

The basics behind this dish

Cooking basics →

More of the same kind

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