Ideas for Leftover Haggis ~ including a few sensible ones!

I have cooked and served a few Burns Suppers in my time – not due to any inherent Scottishness but because I lived in the West Indies!

A friend and I ran the bar and restaurant side of the Royal British Virgin Islands Yacht Club where British ex-pat patrons liked to observe the traditions of home. Of course we couldn’t get free range haggis out there, too hot for them, but we could get good farmed haggis! Any leftovers were, of course, put to tasty use – here are some suggestions.

Traditional Haggis Accompaniments

Haggis is good with strong ale and/or whisky, black pepper, rowanberry or similar sweet sauce and, of course, with neeps and tatties. For the benefit of any foreign chappies reading this neeps and tatties are swede and potatoes, each cooked and mashed separately with butter.

Haggis Leftovers 

If you do have some haggis left over here are my ideas ...

1.   Haggis pizza – lovely easy pizza base recipe here, use the normal toppings; tomato sauce and mozarella or be creative and add what you like! Maybe some tatties!

2.  Add to Bubble & Squeak or, more correctly, Rumbledethumps as it’s known north of the border (apparently one of Gordon Brown’s favourite dishes) which is also a useful way to use up leftover neeps and tatties. Take this another step further ...

3.  Pour beaten egg over the cooked bubble and squeak, lift to allow uncooked egg to flow under the bubble, sprinkle with a little cheese and pop under a hot grill for a minute or two. Haggis Frittata – fusion!

4.  Toss with pasta in a peppery Alfredo Sauce which is one of the loveliest, quickest, easiest sauces ever!

5.  Stuff large open mushrooms with a mixture of leftover haggis, soft breadcrumbs, cream, black pepper and a wee dram of whisky. Top with a few more breadcrumbs and bake till hot and crispy.

6.  Make scotch eggs using 50:50 haggis and sausagemeat and they will be even more scotch than usual!

7.  Use a similar mixture to make haggisy sausage rolls.

8.  Roll into little balls and make Haggis in the Hole using my wonderful, easy and stunningly cheap Yorkshire Pudding recipe here.

9.  I have recently read that haggis lasagne is a “traditional” après Burns Night treat which was news to me and I wonder whose tradition! I think it would work, though it being lamb I think I might use feta as the cheese.

10. If you have a whole unused haggis (by rights it should be a sporting haggis weighing 500g with a maximum diameter of 18 cm and be 22 cm long) then you could try to beat the Haggis Hurling World Record which was set at 180'10" by one Alan Pettigrew in 1984 and wasn’t beaten for many years. In June 2011, however, one Lorne Coltart lobbed a haggis a magnificent 214'9".

The most surprising haggis recipe I have seen so far is ‘Haggis, Okra and Coconut Tart with Pineapple Salsa’ but haven’t tried it, if you do please make sure to leave a comment for me!

Although I visit Scotland quite often I have never been lucky enough to see a wild haggis but here is an interesting photo ... 

I was also interested to read, the fact that it is possible to buy haggis whistles and that ...

“in skilled hands this whistle can perfectly
mimic the mating call of the Haggis”

See here for more information about wild haggi (plural) 

Address to the Haggis

This lovely poem is read as the haggis is borne aloft towards the table, it is quite long and Robert Burns wrote it in 1786 to express his appreciation of the noble beastie. I don’t think he was being too dour, however, as its starts ...

“Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the pudding-race!”

... and later on ...

“The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies (buttocks!) like a distant hill”

Nicely put!  Read the whole Address to a Haggis by Robert Burns plus a translation here 

If these are just some of the suggestions I can think of for leftover haggis don't you wonder what ideas I have for the other 450-ish potential leftovers?

Read more here.