Recently, I learned that true haggis is banned in the US. This is due to a law that makes the sale of lungs for consumption illegal. Haggis is traditionally made from a sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs, meaning that all haggis sold in America only has the heart and liver. After learning this, I was grateful that my trip to the UK included visiting a farm to experience making and eating haggis.
Some tourists believe that haggis is a small mammal, but this is false. Haggis is made from sheep, more specifically the boiled heart, liver, and lungs. These organs are ground up with an onion, mixed with oats and spices, and boiled again inside of a sheep’s stomach. As Ben Johnson says in Haggis, national dish of Scotland, the origins of this meal have been lost to time. Some claim that it was made by old Scottish women as a meal for their husbands to have on the road to the market. It could also be that it was used to preserve the offal from a kill, as organs spoil rapidly. The man leading our experience mentioned that haggis could have come to Scotland from the Vikings of Scandinavia.
No matter how haggis found its way to Scotland, it has come to be seen as a symbol of Scottish pride. Haggis was important due to the nutrition it provided. By using offal that would otherwise spoil, it provided valuable protein. It also contained fiber from the oats, fat from the added fat, as well as many vitamins and minerals, such as iron, that people back then needed to survive. Our experience leader told us that Rabbie Burns, who is considered Scotland’s greatest poet, wrote the poem Address to a Haggis about the dish, which helped cement it in the hearts of the Scottish people.
Compared to the Scottish people, who mostly love haggis, I was hopeful about it but prepared to not like it. Offal isn’t common in America, but it is seen in Indonesia. I’ve even had certain kinds of offal, such as pork rinds, beef tongue, and a few types of liver. However, I could tell that the Scottish people were much more enthusiastic about offal than I was, as I had seen haggis in every store and on every menu since arriving in Scotland.
Making haggis was quite simple. After grinding the offal and onion, we mixed in oats, fat, and spices, before shoving the mix into a sheep’s stomach to boil. We were then served a finished haggis with neeps and tatties. The haggis was dry and a bit grainy, with a warm, meaty taste. It tasted vaguely like black pudding. Even though I tend to dislike grainy foods, I did like the taste, but it could have used some hot sauce. Overall, I liked it, though some members of our group definitely did not.
I feel like I had a similar experience to a Scottish person who was having haggis for the first time. Not only did I try the haggis, but I was one of two people who volunteered to help make it, so I got the full experience. As someone who has had offal multiple times before, haggis wasn’t too abnormal to me, and I assume that Scottishpeople would also be used to offal. There is, however, one major difference between me and a Scottish person eating haggis for the first time, and that is the fact that I have no cultural ties to haggis, while this is the national dish of Scotland. There might be a sense of national pride for a Scottish person, maybe even a slight sense of pressure to like haggis, but not for me.
I would definitely have haggis again, but maybe I’d experiment with it a bit. After all, this is an integral part of Scottish culture. I overheard another member of my class mention a haggis quesadilla and it sounded pretty good. Maybe I’ll make it again, but use different ingredients, granting me a deeper understanding of the complexities of this central piece of Scotland. It really wasn’t that different from ground beef. Maybe that would be a possible way to market it in the States. After all, more Americans need to understand that offal really isn’t awful.
