I have twice tried haggis and the first time was not a memorable experience. We had it at a local restaurant for Burns Night and frankly it was nothing to write home about. When we were in Scotland I ordered some at a local pub, and what made it was the whisky sauce! This month we were challenged by the Daring Cooks’ to make haggis at home. I immediately sent an email to Tom Kitchin asking him for a recipe as there was not one for haggis in his recipe book. Levi (who works at The Kitchin) kindly emailed me Chef Kitchin’s recipe which I used as inspiration for my recipe. I do not have a local butcher that I can trust to supply me with fresh lambs lung, heart and/or stomach and so I decided to make sausages. We have a local sausage maker up the road from us and he kindly packaged some sausage casings for me to use. I used the ingredients listed in Jamie Oliver’s recipe in Jamie’s Great Britain (page 154) and made the most amazing tasting haggis sausages which I served with sweet potato mash and a whisky sauce.
Haggis
Ingredients
- 15 mls olive oil
- 1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
- 7.5 mls ground allspice
- 5 mls ground black pepper
- 5 mls ground coriander
- 2.5 mls ground nutmeg
- 4 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves picked
- Salt to season
- 25 mls whisky
- 2 rashers streaky bacon
- 250 g chuck steak, off the bone
- 250 g cheap cut lamb chops, off the bone
- 185 g lambs kidneys, cleaned
- 125 g chicken livers, trimmed
- 250 g steel cut oats
Method
- In a large frying pan, heat the oil
- Sauté the onion until soft
- Add the spices and cook until they release a scent
- Add the thyme leaves and season generously with salt
- Add the whisky and cook for a few minutes until you can no longer smell the whisky
- Remove from the heat and set aside to cool
- Put the bacon, meat, kidneys and livers through a meat grinder using the coarse blade
- Add the onions and the oats and mix thoroughly to combine
- Test the seasoning by frying off a small amount and adjusting if necessary (the oats will not cook!)
- Once you have the seasoning correct to your taste, push the mixture through a sausage stuffer using a large size casing
- Place in the fridge overnight
- Fill a medium size sauce pan halfway with water
- Bring to the boil and add the sausage
- Boil with the lid off for an hour checking every 15 minutes to make sure the sausage is covered
- Top up with boiling water if necessary
- Finish off by cooking in a frying pan with some olive oil, or on the barbecue - just to get the sausage casing to have some colour and texture
Click on the links for conversions and notes.
Blog-checking lines: The June Daring Cooks Challenge was hosted by Ruth from Makey-Cakey. She brought out the Daring-est of Daring Cooks and challenged us to make real Scottish Haggis.
What I blogged:
- four years ago – Crayfish Pasta
Congratulations Tandy – great effort and the sausages sound and look great. Whisky sauce also sounds delicious.
Thank you Rachel, the whisky sauce was perfect 🙂
You made sausages? I bet homemade version is fantastic. My parents used to make it…
Yours looks and sound fantastic, Tandy… all those spices…
ela h.
Thank you Ela, I cannot wait to make more 🙂
Looks wonderful and delicious! Can’t wait to try this. Thank you. 🙂
My pleasure, and thank you for the visit 🙂
Hi Tandy!
I’m just so impressed that you made your own haggis. I guess I haven’t (up until this point in my life) been daring enough to try such a task. But I watch a lot of Rick Steves traveling dvd’s and he loves it!
Speaking of traveling, can I just say how obsessed I am over all-things-South Africa. I have an old college friend who now lives in SA for 5 years now and is so happy there. When I get in the traveling mood, I start googling travel photo’s of South Africa, it’s Table Mountain and particular that just gets me thinking. Hopefully some day I’ll get there!!!
Laura, I hope that one day you end up here! The mountains around the Western Cape are truly magical. I should share some photographs of where we live on the blog 🙂
Great recipe!!! I’ve had haggis as well, and it was fine, but needed seasoning, in my mind, to actually taste good. So it’s good to see an updated version for haggis! Thanks!
My pleasure, and thank you for the visit Mimi 🙂
I am SO impressed that you made your own sausages. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of anyone doing that before! With steak and bacon, no less!
I’ve had the same bad experience as you with haggis. My dad brought one back from Scotland once and stank the whole house out when he cooked it! He didn’t like it, either!
I think I could ‘stomach’ (sorry) the idea much more eating haggis in sausage-form, especially if I knew as much care had been taken over making them as you clearly did!
Thank you so much Helen for the compliment, and the pun! I am so excited to make more sausages for the blog as they taste better than store bought for sure 🙂
Hi Tandy, very impressive that you made your own sausage. Sounds delicious!
Thank you Cheri 🙂
They look amazing – I love haggis! Have a Scottish pal who makes it but it is quite hard to source the ingredients.
This cheat version is way easier to make as you don’t need to find the lungs and stomach 🙂
This is such a great alternative to getting all the other parts! Great job Tandy and it looks just like haggis filling 😀
Thanks Lorraine, I was hoping for the same texture 🙂
You made your own sausage??!! Wow! Very impressive and it looks great! I might need to try that sometime…
Thank you for the compliment and the visit Anne 🙂
Jamie’s the man! And you’re the girl, Tandy ;). It looks rich, spicy and flavourful!
Julie
Gourmet Getaways
His recipes are really good!
I love turkey sausages and you made your own??!!! I would love to learn to make my own someday!
I shall do a step by step post sometime soon! Thanks for the visit Ami 🙂
Tandy, you are CLEVER! I love haggis (but I’m really the only one in the family who does) and your sausages look fantastic! 🙂
Thank you so much Celia, I hope to make more sausages soon!
Very impressive – I really must make my own sausages sometime.
Thank you Sally, and it is much easier than it sounds 🙂
I am always amazed by your skill but to make your own haggis? Crazy amazing 😀
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
Thank you for the compliment Uru 🙂
This sounds so interesting- making sausage instead of using the lamb stomach was a great idea.
Thank you Mary Frances 🙂
You made your own haggis,…now, I am impressed! I ate it twice on a Holiday in Scotland!
I love Tom Kitchin but not so much haggis! 😉 He is one cool chef! I know! x
Tom is an amazing chef 🙂
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