I had vegetarian haggis at a Burns’ night celebration with friends who don’t eat mammalian meat - it was just like stuffing, although more like the stuffing you’d put in a cushion than a chicken.
There are a few items at the back of my refrigerator one might conceivably eat, not knowing if they were cake.
Betty Crocker recommends mixing the canned haggis with lutefisk and gefilte fish, and then washing it down with kerosene.
This is the most bizarre thing I’ve read here in, well, days.
No no, we do actually eat lutefisk in Norway (I do not know about the swedes if they eat it (not the turnips, but the people on the other side of out border). It is mostly eaten for christmas with boiled potatoes and carrot, fried bacon and klenning ( a square type of lefse).
Kotick
So, when you dumped the haggis out of the can, did it retain the can shape, like cranberry sauce?
If it was me, I’d pierce the can, boil the can (half an hour maybe), remove from the heat and pick up with a towel, remove both ends and use one end to push the haggis out of the other onto the plate. Mashed tatties and swede, and a spoonful of cooking whisky in the gravy won’t hurt.
Like one or two other Brit dishes that make Americans hurl, it tastes much, much better than it sounds.
Now that IS weird. Caramelised onion and beetroot, apparently. Bleh.
Jumping back in here…
Christopher, you didn’t mention your location in the OP, but the odds are good there will be a Robert Burns night somewhere near you in the next 3 weeks or so. Haggis is a part of the celebration, and most organizers go all-out to make sure it’s the best haggis possible. Should you happen to be in Montana, you’re invited to join our local celebration!
Let me also dispel the myth that haggis is “guts stuffed in a sheep’s stomach.” Haggis came about when the evil English overlords in Scotland adopted the policy of taking all the “best” parts of the Scots’ sheep, and while the English feasted on leg o’ lamb, the Scots were left with mostly innards and the tough cuts.
When dealing with tough cuts of meat, one makes stew or soup. The Scots created a dish made with a combination of organ meats and everything else left behind, and mixed in barley and other fillers. Scots who grew up on the stuff came to love it, and it became the national dish of Scotland.
Myth #1: There is a recipe for haggis. No. There are hundreds of recipes for haggis. No two people make it the same way. I have a Scottish cookbook from the late 1800’s, and comparing that to a modern Scottish cookbook you wouldn’t even know it was the same dish.
Myth #2: You’re eating a sheep’s stomach. Well… There are two kinds of haggis. The kind you’re thinking of is indeed stuffed in a casing (a la sausage), but there’s no need to eat the casing. With a pan haggis (the more common kind in restaurants), there’s no casing at all.
Aye, right! 
It’s just a convenient way to prepare the less palatable parts of the sheep, back when meat was more of a luxury than it is now.
…which is more or less the same motive as many other forcemeats such as sausage, hamburger, meatloaf, pate, meatballs, etc.
Oh, and Spam, Spam, Spam!
Well, exactly. I was just amused by the other explanation.
I think most of American’s squick in relation to haggis is all the innards. We don’t, as a rule, like organ meats much. You might find the odd person (like me) who likes calf’s liver, but even that gets me sounds of revulsion from friends and family. Even tongue, which isn’t smooth organ meat but striated muscle meat like any other - is too “organ-like” for most of us to eat knowingly. So to take kidneys (blerg) and hearts (gah!) and lungs (gack!) and shove them in a stomach (horrrrrk!) just makes it sound nice and shocking. Saying “organ meats” (eww) in “casing” isn’t a whole lot better, really.
We like our organs where Og intended them - ground beyond recognition with the lips and arseholes in hot dogs! 
Are there no regional hotspots for organ meats? I’m thinking places heavily settled by Germans or French.
South St. Louis still has a few places that serve fried cows’ brain sandwiches. Does that count? (heavily settled by Germans and French. thank God the Italians showed up, later)
… i’ve been drunk enough to try haggis, once. but braaaaaains? no, never.
Ye Gods! I’d think I’d try that (drunk, obv) but I suspect it’d be pretty much a death sentence to do so here.
The South and some black people do chitlins (which are cleaned and fried pig small intestines) and…uh…some old people like chicken gizzards…I’m sure some poorer areas like rural Appalachia still eat everything that’s edible off an animal…that’s really all I can think of, outside of recent immigrant populations. But most of the time they’re put in pet food and sausages, including hot dogs. I grew up in one of the German settled areas south of Chicago, and we still didn’t touch innards, 'cept when Grandma used the bag of turkey organs for her gravy stock at Thanksgiving and Mom said they made it taste awful.
Do testicles count? There are a few state fairs that devote themselves to “Rocky Mountain Oysters” ([del]bull[/del] [del]cow[/del] bovine testicles) or turkey testicles (I think “Turkey Testicle Festival” is my favorite English phrase ever.) But these are known because they’re so odd, so I wouldn’t offer testicles to my visiting American friends on the assumption they’ll like them!
I think a lot of Scots ended up there.
Sure, they’d count! Don’t think there’s a specific ball-dish over here. We’ve got sweetbreads (thymus or pancreas) which is tasty and tripe (cow stomach) which is vile beyond imagining.
I will eat my can of haggis tonight. I don’t have a deep fryer so I will just pan fry it. I have no idea how to cook a rutabega. Perhaps tonight would be a good night to have my teeny tiny bottle of 25 year old scotch.
I live in Eugene Oregon. I looked for a Robert Burns night but didn’t find one.
Cut it into half inch cubes, boil until they start to soften, and then mash them up with black pepper and a little butter. Add mashed potato and your whisky, and you’ve got a one-man Burns supper. You only have to recite “Tam o’ Shanter” if you really want to. Enjoy.