Foodblogging: Haggis? Aye, haggis.

 Oh god.

I've learned a lot about haggis in the last couple of days.  I'm not entirely thrilled about it, but I'm also not as grossed out as I was in my pre-haggis life.

I learned that my above method of cooking haggis is entirely wrong.  Evidently you're just supposed to heat it up, scoop out the insides, and serve it with "neeps and tatties", or mashed turnips and potatoes.  And whiskey.  Sadly, we had none of these things.

But let's go back to the beginning.  Haggis?  In Minneapolis?  The Twin Cities aren't known as a huge Scottish hotspot.  But as we were waiting for our fish at the meat counter at the Seward Co-op, Husband's eye caught the offal-stuffed sausage at the end of the meat case.  He asked the meat guy how one prepares haggis and the answer was surprisingly simple.  It's already cooked so you just need to heat it up.  So 0.7 pounds of haggis made it home with us that morning.

I unwrapped it the next morning because Husband requested his haggis with a side of eggs and toast.  I hadn't seen it yet and I was expecting something more, um, stomach shaped.  It looked like fresh bratwurst tied at the ends with twine.  I split it down the middle, seared it in some oil, and plopped it onto a plate.  I do need to note that when I turned it over to sear the uncut side the casing shrank and made it look like the haggis was writhing around in the pan.  It seriously creeped me out.

 It looks like the haggis monster is devouring the plate chicken.

So sticking with my "I will eat anything once, except brains" ethos I give it a hesitant first taste.  My brain was screaming at me to stop and I had a hard time putting the fork into my mouth.  Honestly -- it wasn't bad.  It tasted like meatloaf.  I was expecting more of a liver-y mineral-y flavor.  It was actually pretty tasty, infused with garlic throughout.  The texture was light and, dare I say, almost fluffy.  Still, I couldn't get past one forkful because I was fixated on what, exactly, I was eating.

What is haggis?  Traditionally it's sheep's heart, liver, and lungs mashed up with oats, stuffed into the sheep's stomach, and boiled.  Since the FDA previously said that our puny American systems can't handle lungs, you're probably not going to find it in commercial American made haggis.  Oh darn.  But how's this for some freaky Baader-Meinhof breaking news?  The 21-year US ban on haggis has just been lifted.  According to The Heavy Table the Seward version has beef hearts, liver, tongue, kidneys, steel cut oats, and garlic.  It's in an intestinal casing rather than a stomach.

I just got a little faint typing "intestinal casing."

Husband and proclaimed that he will be eating every part of the animal possible at every given opportunity and has followed through.  While I agree with this philosophy, it's been hard for my mostly-pescitarian brain (and palate) to handle since I do have to try everything at least once.  For the record, black pudding tastes like liver sand and white pudding just tastes like iron.

I do recommend everyone try it at least once.  It's certainly not going to kill you.  It may actually make you stronger.  And you might just find you like it.