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The making of a Haggis


happyjillin

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No it isn't Mexican  and you can't get it here and I  just learned one of the main ingredients has been banned in the US and Canada for many years. I had to go to country abattoirs to get the pluck and tell them i was only using it to experiment making natural glues, when I made my excellent haggis for Robbie Burns birthday. Left overs can be used to make shepherds pie. I use my 19th century copy of Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management and it takes me 2 days to make. Start with cock a leekie soup and or Scotch eggs and then after the reading of the ode and piping in the haggis accompanied by tatties, neeps and nips, the illustrious haggis.

haggis pluck.jpg

boiling haggis.jpg

cutting haggis.jpg

haggis cock a leekie soup.jpg

haggis piper.jpg

haggis neeps and nips.jpg

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23 minutes ago, ladner said:

So are you offering to make it for 200+ guests at Burns Night this year?

I am an invalid so are you prepared to help. I will need you to drive,help with a wheelchair. get me the right pots with large stoves find  butchered sheep and get the plucks and stomachs and whatever else I need as my assistant. Are you offering? As I recall each guest received about 2 ounces of dog barf.

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8 hours ago, slainte39 said:

Was it piped in properly?  That´s probably where it went A RYE.  :D

You don't even need to look carefully to see that it was piped in properly by a bombero no less. Even the mention of "went a rye" as a pun is heresy when clearly there is a bottle of my favourite single malt  scotch, Laphroaig, on the groaning board and never a rye shall be seen alongside a haggis. there is some toasted oatmeal inside the haggis.

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10 hours ago, happyjillin said:

I am an invalid so are you prepared to help. I will need you to drive,help with a wheelchair. get me the right pots with large stoves find  butchered sheep and get the plucks and stomachs and whatever else I need as my assistant. Are you offering? As I recall each guest received about 2 ounces of dog barf.

Maybe all that is needed is your recipe for your version of the real thing. The recipe has certainly changed through the years here. It is difficult to make it in that quantity. But everyone does their best. Everything that night is done by volunteers trying to make it enjoyable for the guests. Not quite sure why you are all being so critical. So don't come if you don't like it.

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3 hours ago, ladner said:

Maybe all that is needed is your recipe for your version of the real thing. The recipe has certainly changed through the years here. It is difficult to make it in that quantity. But everyone does their best. Everything that night is done by volunteers trying to make it enjoyable for the guests. Not quite sure why you are all being so critical. So don't come if you don't like it.

Having my recipe from Mrs. Beeton's 19th century book with some technology but not ingredients from The Frugal Gourmet's cook book will not help you if you refuse to do it properly and just throw some things in a pan. Once was enough for me but the piper was good. The poster Willie said the dog barf was good and I merely gave my opinion on that. My judging with 4 others on haggis was even in a newspaper's evaluation of 4 commercial makers in Alberta. The worst of the 4 was unanimously given thumbs down by all 5 of us with language too strong to be printed in a news paper. I explained how you can use my services and you as my chief volunteer will be in charge of cleaning the stomach without tearing it. It takes 24 hours in a bucket where you will change the water and salt frequently while rubbing all the green and brown bits and stains off of it with your bare hands.

 

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Wouldn't it just be easier to use caul fat? Still widely used by chefs and sausage makers .I have tasted haggis in Scotland in the British Petroleum staff canteen (free lunches!) in Aberdeen, and also when they put me up to stay in a three star hotel in Lerwick, Shetland Isles. The hotel had an open bar policy for me, and at least 30 types of whiskey. The Haggis I tasted had a lot of toasted oatmeal, and some mild offal meats like liver and heart. This seems to be the more modern version.

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Mrs. Beeson wrote the first addition of her book which this recipe comes from, in 1868. Is that what you consider modern? What do you thing the pluck is? and yes beef or sheep suet is added and if there is not enough pluck I add neck meat. This is all cooked lightly and then mixed by putting through a meat grinder,manual or electric but not a blender nor food processor. Then all the ingredients including specific spices and toasted oat "meal". are put in the stomach and tied loosely for considerable expansion when  simmered in a large commercial size pot of water. I borrowed the pot from the Canadian Legion.

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The ingredient which is banned is sheep lungs. Makes sense, sheep eat very closely to the ground, even tearing up plants. This makes them more prone to infection. If you notice, goats do not normally eat off the ground, they like to climb up a bit. Horses also do not eat from the ground, but this is in õpart of the way they are trained, by tieing their heads back. It maybe reduces chances of infection or poisoning, but the stated reason is that a horse is less likely to kick or buck if restrained this way. This might be a local thing.

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18 minutes ago, CHILLIN said:

The ingredient which is banned is sheep lungs. Makes sense, sheep eat very closely to the ground, even tearing up plants. This makes them more prone to infection. If you notice, goats do not normally eat off the ground, they like to climb up a bit. Horses also do not eat from the ground, but this is in õpart of the way they are trained, by tieing their heads back. It maybe reduces chances of infection or poisoning, but the stated reason is that a horse is less likely to kick or buck if restrained this way. This might be a local thing.

The ban has been lifted in Canada. There is clearly no infection in the pluck pic I posted and only the US has kept a ban and millions of Scots and others in the UK and elsewhere eat lungs in their haggis. Any other non issue you would like to add after fooling around on google. Are you serious,horses in fact do eat of the ground,if you haven't seen that around here you aren't looking and cattle do too so should we not eat beef nor drink milk direct from the udder in that specialJalisco way?

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I see tied up horses almost everyday. The free roaming ones like to eat the tops of the greens, as do beef cattle. Don't you remember the wars between sheep farmers and cattle farmers over this specific issue?. I haven't seen any sheep in Mexico, but saw a lot in Wales. These sheep are farmed for their wool, and the lambs for meat. When the old sheep die, they are sold as mutton, and to be inspected for disease such as cancers, etc. I would never consume raw milk, no matter how much tequila or cana they put in it. I have been inside many slaughterhouse and abbatoirs in Canada, buying green tripe for our dogs, and oxtails for ourselves (the Koreans in Vancouver have driven the price skyhigh). The main abbatoir I went to specialised in deceased milk cows. The owner claimed milk cows had the best treatment. I was a frequent enough vistor there I was once there when the inspector was there, she had turned down a carcass because it was too full of tumors. Another company, selling frozen chunks of raw meat for dogs. It required a visit to his farm. It was gross, he had mounds of dead animals, calves, rabbits. It was like a horror movie.

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5 minutes ago, CHILLIN said:

I see tied up horses almost everyday. The free roaming ones like to eat the tops of the greens, as do beef cattle. Don't you remember the wars between sheep farmers and cattle farmers over this specific issue?. I haven't seen any sheep in Mexico, but saw a lot in Wales. These sheep are farmed for their wool, and the lambs for meat. When the old sheep die, they are sold as mutton, and to be inspected for disease such as cancers, etc. I would never consume raw milk, no matter how much tequila or cana they put in it. I have been inside many slaughterhouse and abbatoirs in Canada, buying green tripe for our dogs, and oxtails for ourselves (the Koreans in Vancouver have driven the price skyhigh). The main abbatoir I went to specialised in deceased milk cows. The owner claimed milk cows had the best treatment. I was a frequent enough vistor there I was once there when the inspector was there, she had turned down a carcass because it was too full of tumors. Another company, selling frozen chunks of raw meat for dogs. It required a visit to his farm. It was gross, he had mounds of dead animals, calves, rabbits. It was like a horror movie.

Your tiny bit of experience is not relative to proper haggis. What point are you trying to make in your usual fashion when someone clearly has more actual experience than you?

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3 minutes ago, happyjillin said:

Your tiny bit of experience is not relative to proper haggis. What point are you trying to make in your usual fashion when someone clearly has more actual experience than you?

Ok. I'll keep it simple.

A) I have lived in Scotland, Wales and London. You have never been there. You see Mel Gibson in Braveheart, and all of a sudden that is who you want to be.

B Mrs. Beeton's book is not a be all, end all reliable source. It was even criticised by many when it was published, she was basically creating a fantasy world about ideal middle class Victorian life. Many chef's have critiqued her methods as incorrect and possibly dangerous When she died of syphilis, contracted from her husband while on their honeymoon, this was another blow to her Victorian fantasy. There is a good reason this book was almost lost. Edith Wharton does a much better job - but no recipes.

Since you like history so much, read this account of the sheep wars and the hashknife cowboys, about the time Mrs. Beeton was writing her book about gentile lifestyles and manners.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep_Wars

 

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41 minutes ago, CHILLIN said:

Ok. I'll keep it simple.

A) I have lived in Scotland, Wales and London. You have never been there. You see Mel Gibson in Braveheart, and all of a sudden that is who you want to be.

B Mrs. Beeton's book is not a be all, end all reliable source. It was even criticised by many when it was published, she was basically creating a fantasy world about ideal middle class Victorian life. Many chef's have critiqued her methods as incorrect and possibly dangerous When she died of syphilis, contracted from her husband while on their honeymoon, this was another blow to her Victorian fantasy. There is a good reason this book was almost lost. Edith Wharton does a much better job - but no recipes.

Since you like history so much, read this account of the sheep wars and the hashknife cowboys, about the time Mrs. Beeton was writing her book about gentile lifestyles and manners.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep_Wars

 

One of the regulars at my haggis dinners is a Brit and graduate of Cordon Blue and she claims I make the best haggis she has ever had. More of your googled speculation on Mrs. Beeton and crap about sheep wars and cowboys you are a hoot when you highjack. By the way , my son has lived in London for years and learned to cook from me so between my friend and my son and me,we have had and know more about haggis than you ever will. I think mrs's B's book is a gem and I like my Frugal Gourmet's book as well, neither for just the haggis recipes. B's book was printed over and over and over again until 1914 so get your facts straight before you post your tripe[pun intended] Since you brought up[pun intended]cattle and sheep wars why don't you start a new FOOD oriented thread about the joys of chomping on lamb fries and prairie oysters to occupy yourself with in a productive manner.

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6 hours ago, johanson said:

I have heard you speak in a foreign language, Slainte. And you do seem to have a French  accent. 

Only when I´m around you, Mon Amour.  I was told many years ago, when you first came here, that THAT would really impress you and that we would be friends forever.

I think Judge Leavitt told me that, I´m sure you remember him.  By the way, your Russell Wilson seems to be speaking with a French accent too lately.  Can´t wait to see him on Sunday.

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