Haggis the famous Scottish dish of animal blood and meat, a bunch of sheep guts, oats and intenseness thrown into a bladder and cooked up a treat! This is one of those many dishes that regularly makes lists of most rancid in the world, but is it that bad?
OK, so what exactly is haggis?
Haggis categorized as a savory pudding originating from Scotland. Haggis sheep’s pluck (heart, liver, and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and cooked while traditionally encased in the animal’s stomach.
Again it sounds pretty rancid, but actually has a gamey sausage like nutty taste. It is traditionally served with neeps (turnips) and tatties (potatoes) and is eaten on Burns night, a kind of weird Scottish pseudo new year thing.
Is haggis nice?
As I kid I never had an interest in trying haggis, but my old man got it one day and made me try it. I found it amazing, a bit like a met loaf, but with so much more to it. It is almost an offal meat pie/sausage type thing. I was a fan. But it was the net day that I would be introduced to genius haggis with brown sauce.
Haggis with brown sauce….
Brown sauce deserves its own article, which it will probably get, but it is a vinegar type brown welsh served almost exclusively in the UK as an alternative to tomato ketchup.
It is a combination of tomatoes, molasses, dates, apples, tamarind, spices, vinegar, and sometimes raisins. Slightly sweat and tangy it goes great with English chips and as I was to find out haggis!
We had a bunch of haggis left over from the night before to which my father not only suggested we eat, but with a gleam in his eye suggested with have it with brown sauce. Cold haggis and brown sauce was a revelation, it stayed in my ind, but I was only to have haggis a few more times over the years (it is banned in places like Scotland), but I knew I would see haggis again.
Haggis in Cambodia
Living in Cambodia has good and bad parts, one of the good parts is the range of goods we can buy at Angkor Market, Siem Reap, which we affectionally call Kwanbok.
On my last visit I was to see a tin of haggis! It was about $4, so not all that cheap, but my word haggis! and Haggis by the tin that could either be cooked in a saucepan, or even microwaved. I was back.
Tinned haggis in Cambodia
On opening the tinned haggis it looked alarmingly like dog food, not ideal, but I threw it in the saucepan and started to cook a storm. Grant’s haggis turned out to be pretty good, not as good as fresh haggis i’ll certainly agree, but extremely nostalgic!
Haggis and brown sauce
The newt day I opened the fridge to the leftover haggis and decided to brig back another old favorite, haggis and brown sauce! I’ll add that even having brown sauce makes me lucky living in Cambodia, with me even having it imported into the UK, but have it I did and add it to the haggis did I!
Much more nostalgia and every bit as good as I remembered. And there you have it the Street Food Guy says this weird dish of haggis is not only worth eating, but go the extra yard and do cold haggis with brown sauce!