A few years ago I had an occasion to wonder what haggis was. I didn’t have access to haggis, I believe I had read about it. Anyway, I found a description (I believe in a dictionary) and I remember thinking, “Would anyone really want to eat that?” Since then I’ve seen it referenced many times and have from time to time made some derogatory comments about haggis and the people that might eat it. I’ve always taken the position that I would never eat anything like that…but as I have learned in the past never is a very long time.
Last week I was on hand to scald and butcher a hog for an upcoming barbecue. As a participant in this exercise I was put in charge of the puddin bucket since everyone knew that my grandmother was a fine maker of puddin. For the uninitiated, puddin is made of the head and assorted entrails of a recently butchered hog and the puddin bucket is a container kept on hand when one butchers hogs to contain said head(s) and entrails. The parts are lovingly cooked with rice and secret herbs and spices. Often, if there is enough, it is put in a casing. Granny made the puddin last week and it’s great. It will not last through the week. It’s great with grits for breakfast.
Now for my question: How is puddin compared to haggis? I have never been around haggis and have openly made fun of the idea of haggis in the past. Have I been mistaken? Someone please educate me on haggis. I would really welcome a comparison of haggis with puddin from someone who knows.
I can never understand why haggis comes in for so much ridicule and scorn and disgust.
First of all, the lamb parts in a traditional haggis - liver, lungs and heart - are ground up so finely there is NO way of knowing what they are. They’re also mixed with steel cut oats, as well as onions and sometimes other things like mushrooms. It’s not like someone rips out a lamb’s heart and puts it, still beating, on the plate and says, “there’s your haggis.” The meat in haggis is in no way aesthetically offensive to even the most conservative palate.
Second of all, people always talk about the “stomach” that the haggis is cooked in as if it’s the sickest thing in the world, like someone ripped the gooey, mucus-coated stomach out of a lamb and shoved the lamb parts into it to cook. The “stomach” encasing a traditional haggis is just the stomach membrane, a thin outer casing virtually identical to the casings of other kinds of sausages. Also, the stomach itself is not eaten. And nowadays, many people don’t even use a real stomach membrane, just an artificial boiling bag, or even bake the haggis in a pan.
Third of all, people eat hot dogs and sausages all the time and nobody ever thinks of them as disgusting even though they’re made with God knows what. Why is haggis any worse? If anything, it’s better. If you’re making haggis the traditional way, you’re getting the ingredients from a butcher shop or directly from a lamb processor and you have the whole meats intact and able to be visually identified and inspected. This is a damn sight more reassuring than eating some sausage that was made in a gigantic factory out of stuff you’ll never know about.
Eat haggis!
I am unaware of this puddin of which you speak, but it doesn’t sound a million miles removed. Good haggis is a thing of joy and wonder and is remarkably versatile (a mexican takeaway here in Edinburgh has started doing an excellent haggis buritto). Never made my own, but the following article and slideshow produce a pretty amazing-looking one.