"Civilized Haggis"

**thescot** · 7th November 13, 03:29 PM

Because of availability issues (no lungs or stomach), I've substituted.

A boiling/roasting bag works very well in place of a stomach. It even looks right if you squeeze it tight when done and then run the whole thing under a broiler to brown it slightly before serving. After all, the stomach is really just for holding all the stuff together!

I have chopped lamb to give it a "sheepy" taste, and I substituted chicken livers when I couldn't get sheep's liver. I would not use hamburger or some such just for the principle of the thing. But . . .

Maybe it's not really haggis, but it sure does a good job of passing! The real trick is to use lots of good oats and onions with a liberal sprinkling of salt and pepper. You can see one of ours here:

and here

Let's face it, if you eat duck liver pate, you should eat anything! Put your haggis out with some water crackers and tell 'em it's a fine canape to be eaten only with the pinky finger extended delicately. It goes well with a fine merlot. . .or port!

**Pleater** · 7th November 13, 03:40 PM

Having perused a few old cook books, there would seem to be a core of basic ingredients to many recipes and then a variety of things to add if you have them to hand.
Haggis seems to be basically an oatmeal pudding with a range of additions, so if a cook is asked to produce a haggis for those of delicate sensibilities using less odiferous or graunchy parts of the animal just seems the way to do it.

A chef would probably have a fit if asked to make any such thing.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

**Steve Ashton** · 7th November 13, 03:42 PM

Ya know, it's interesting. Many of those things we call National or ethnic dishes are in fact "poor people food." Bouillabaisse, if you have it on the docks of Marseilles, is fish stew made from whatever the fisherman did not sell out of his catch that day. Soul food in the US is what ever was really cheap or free along the edges of the field after harvesting the good stuff.
Haggis made from the offal cuts is much the same way. Lots of cheap oats to fill you up and enough of anything else you could find to make it go down better.
We seem to hold Bouillabaisse, Soul Food, Haggis etc in some sort of reverence that I think would shock the tenant farmers who figured out how to make something to eat with what would probably not be welcome on the table up at the big house.

**Pleater** · 7th November 13, 03:50 PM

I can recall some days back when I was paying a mortgage all on my own when the dog got oats cooked in beef stock and I had porridge - we'd have been glad of anything to add to the pot, but we got by.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

**tundramanq** · 7th November 13, 05:04 PM

My family grew up pretty poor. Pinto beans were our mainstay. Flavored with what ever was on sale - salt pork, marrow bone or on special days, Spam. I went about 10 years beanless when I got out on my own before I started craving them again.

**Mikilt** · 8th November 13, 06:54 AM

I use this recipe and I add 1 cup of liver.
http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008...is-recipe.html

**Laird_M** · 8th November 13, 07:27 AM

Originally Posted by Steve Ashton

Ya know, it's interesting. Many of those things we call National or ethnic dishes are in fact "poor people food." Bouillabaisse, if you have it on the docks of Marseilles, is fish stew made from whatever the fisherman did not sell out of his catch that day. Soul food in the US is what ever was really cheap or free along the edges of the field after harvesting the good stuff.
Haggis made from the offal cuts is much the same way. Lots of cheap oats to fill you up and enough of anything else you could find to make it go down better.
We seem to hold Bouillabaisse, Soul Food, Haggis etc in some sort of reverence that I think would shock the tenant farmers who figured out how to make something to eat with what would probably not be welcome on the table up at the big house.

As a former chef, who's also done research into medieval food, you're spot on. Some of the dishes that we used to prepare for the restaurant and people paid high proces for, were originally peasant food, and dishes that are now common place and looked down on were origianlly nobility dishes. Its a funny old world.