- Robert Burns, Address to a Haggis

Haggis is a very old Scottish delicacy, traditionally prepared by the wives of the drovers and made from readily available ingredients including the ‘pluck’ (heart, kidneys and lungs) of the sheep.

Haggis would have been prepared by boiling the chopped up pluck and mincing with diced onions before simmering with toasted oatmeal, suet and salt. Finally, the tasty mince mixture would be scooped into a clean sheep stomach and boiled for around three hours.

Unfortunately, our haggis recipe is confidential but the method is more or less similar. We make our Knockderry Haggis from lambs pluck supplied by Macbeth’s Butcher in Forres near Inverness, which is diced and sealed off before adding softened chopped onions, toasted oatmeal, herbs and lots of spices. The final addition is beef dripping which is then left to simmer for around 30 minutes to allow the oats to soak up the fat.

Once the haggis is ready we check it for seasoning and pack away in logs to be served with neeps, tatties and some whisky sauce. Perfect all year round, but particularly on Burns Night.

So why did someone decide to boil up sheep guts, mince it and mix it with oatmeal and thyme? Out of necessity, I suppose. As long as there has been cooks, they have challenged culinary boundaries. The ingredients include the lamb pluck (the heart lungs and liver), oatmeal, thyme and onions. These ingredients were most readily available in Scotland and an obvious choice.

As time passed, spices were added to th mix, such as ginger, pimento, nutmeg and of course black pepper which gives haggis it’s heat. There are countless wonderful recipes to produce our Scottish icon that we call Haggis. At the Knockderry, we prepare our haggis weekly using the pluck of Cairngorm mountain lamb, pinhead oatmeal from Alford and thyme from the hotel’s garden.

Haggis is especially significant at this time of year as January 25th draws upon us. Robert Burns immortalised the chieftain of the pudding race in his fantastic poem ‘Address to a Haggis’ which is recited at Burns Suppers around the end of January all over the world.