If you’re reading this it’s because any of the following may apply: 1. You have an interest in traditional cultures and foods like me, 2. You’re an adventurous eater, 3. You like me, or 4. You don’t like me but you’re too nice to simply tell me to not bother sending this to you.
The Backstory
I imagine you already know what haggis is, but just in case it’s a little fuzzy… Allow me to enlighten the mind! Haggis is THE national dish of Scotland and is the main part of the Scottish holiday, Burn’s Supper or Robert Burn’s Day, January 25th. He was a Scottish poet who wrote about haggis and a bunch of other stuff – you can read the rest on wikipedia. 😉
Making haggis with authentic ingredients is a substantial challenge in this country, let me tell you. The standard ingredients involve a sheep pluck (heart, lungs, liver) cooked and ground up with onions, suet (fat), oatmeal, salt, and spices. This meat mix is then stuffed into a sheep stomach, which is simply a casing to hold the mix while it’s cooked for a while. Yes, to most it sounds disgusting, but in truth, it’s simply just a version of meatloaf.
Since living in PA, I’ve become more interested in cooking and in recent years it has blended with other interests I have such as traditional cultures, healthy food and nutrient dense foods (organ meats and dark, rich greens), and my own family heritage. When Debbie and I took a trip to Ireland in 2011, I fell in love with white pudding, an Irish breakfast sausage and was bummed that it was so hard to find in the US and expensive to buy since it’s a perishable food with expensive shipping. So after enough digging on the web and some first attempts, I figured out how to make some and continued to dive further into the world of sausage and traditional puddings (savory, meat puddings, not the sweet puddings of our modern culture). Over the years I knew about haggis but when looking at recipes, I thought there’s no way I’d ever bother with something like that – way too involved. Then about a year or two ago I made faggots, a traditional Welsh dish made with pork heart, liver, breadcrumbs, onions, egg, etc. and served with carmelized onions – yum! As for the word “faggots,” I’ll leave the standard jokes aside and simply mention that this word has existed with older meanings than the recent offensive version our culture gives it. They’re like little meatloaf patties that are very similar to salisbury steak, only tastier. The kids and I really enjoy them. After making this dish, I came back to haggis and it didn’t seem as extreme, just tricky because of the lung ingredient. What sealed it for me was when a friend told me one day that she was able to get some organ meat for me from a cow she was going to help butcher. So I thought it over and looked at haggis recipes again and thought, “This is really rare… I may never have this kind of chance again… I’ve gotta make it happen!”
The Most Challenging Recipe…Ever!
The challenge with making haggis is all about the lung and the the fact that it is illegal to sell or buy in this country ever since the early 70’s. When you dig into the reasons why this is the case, it’s this obscure idea that states, “Inspectors deemed lung unfit for human consumption due to the potential for stomach contents of the animal to enter the airway from the slaughtering process.” Personally I think there’s no logic to it. Tripe is beef stomach and is available in every grocery store. Chitterlings come from arguably the worst region of an animal and are also very easy to obtain. Anyone with half a brain will wash, clean, and otherwise prepare any food being cooked, regardless of whatever has contacted it. And when you put this together with the fact that we’re the only country in the world that has this law, it comes off as antiquated or even xenophobic. It seems more likey that the real reason lung is banned in this country is what could easily be called, “the -ick factor.” Those inspectors thought about this as a food and decided, “Ooo, that’s icky. Let’s just ban it.” And since there simply isn’t a big market for haggis or any other lung dish in this country and not enough Scottish lobbyists pushing to overturn the ban, it remains.
OK, enough of the rant. Who knows, if I keep going, I may end up talking about Trump or some other keep-the-government-outta-my-dinner topic and there’s plenty of this stuff available these days without me adding to it! So sourcing some lung is without question the most difficult ingredient in the recipe. When putting together the ingredient list, I couldn’t get all sheep/lamb organ meats because they simply aren’t available or easy to find locally, but figured that as long as I had the correct meats, I was good to go, or as close as I could get to an authentic result. From my research, calf liver is the closest to sheep liver, which is sold at the local over-priced grocery store – simple. Then I was able to buy some lamb heart in the strip district, which is one of my favorite Pittsburgh destinations – easy. The different between suet from a cow or a sheep didn’t seem to be critical to me, and beef suet is not hard to find, so I also bought this at Strip District Meats for a good price – again, easy. The lung was already planned to be shipped when available, so the only item left to put together was the casing. Sheep stomach is practically impossible to find, even though it’s not banned. So a very common and acceptable replacement for this casing, even in Scotland, is something called a beef cap or ox bung. It’s easy to find on the web from sausage supply companies. This is the first part of the large intestine, called the cecum. It’s a pouch, which in a cow, is pretty large and long – about 18-24 inches and has a diameter of up to 5 inches when stuffed. I’ve used various casings since starting to make sausage but this casing is a whole different animal. In the old days before plastic casings were created for lunch meats, this is the size of casing for bologna, which is made in diameters this large and is probably the reason why it is often referred to as “jumbo” in this area.
