When Scottish Americans and Scottish immigrants sit down to celebrate the birthday of 18th-century poet Robert Burns on Saturday night, traditional haggis may not be up to purist standards.
Haggis can be a delicious Scottish dish of steamed sheep’s innards, oatmeal and spices. real Haggis, many argue, is only good if it includes one key ingredient: sheep’s lung, which is used in the filling. In the United States, which has banned the importation of haggis with sheep’s lungs, some Americans of Scottish heritage have turned to the black market to get their hands on the real thing.
Now McSweenOne haggis maker in Scotland has developed a recipe that replaces sheep’s lungs with sheep’s heart to meet US import guidelines. This is not the first modification that McSween, founded in Edinburgh in 1953, has made to its Haggis. In a nod to modern tastes, he has replaced the sheep’s stomach traditionally used as the haggis casing for the beef casing, as used in some sausages.
“Do I think there’s something to the texture difference that the lungs add to it? Yes,” said Greg Brockman, a Brooklyn butcher who has made his own version of haggis for years. “Do I think the average consumer will notice? Probably not.”
The cutting-edge new tech is due to arrive in the US by this time next year, with it set to be the centerpiece of Burns Night celebrations.
Burns helped turn hogs, traditionally eaten by peasants, into Scotland’s national dish with “Fair fa’ your honest, saucy face / Great chieftain of the pudding race!” There were similar lines. In his poem “Address to a Haggiswhich is recited as part of the celebrations.
While the mere mention of delicacy may appeal to Americans, James McSwain, managing director of his family business, sees the potential far beyond Burns Knight.
“A lot of people eat it week after week,” he said. Made a delicious meat protein ingredient.”
Take off the casing, and add the stuffing as a topping or ingredient to a haggis pizza, haggis lasagna or haggis poutine, Mr. McSwain said.
“You can make hundreds of menu suggestions,” he said. “It’s versatility.”
McSween sells around eight million pounds of haggis in the UK each year, where the recipe includes sheep’s lungs. Its biggest client is grocery and department store chain Marks & Spencer. Mr McSwain said the market for Haggis is about 14 million pounds, or about $17.5 million.
Entering the US market has been a challenge. Haggis was banned in the 1970s due to a ban on the sale of lungs. In 1989, the United States banned sheep and beef imports from Great Britain following an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, otherwise known as mad cow disease.
Mr McSween said he had been looking to break into the North American market since 2015, when he began representing the Scottish haggis and meat industry in talks with the Canadian and US governments to expand Scottish Atlantic. Lamb and beef can be tried again in the menu. .
America comfortable Lamb and beef imports were banned in 2022, but because of the ban on the sale of lungs, one thing was clear: if McSween’s haggis was to be sold in the U.S., it had to replace lamb heart. Will be.
Mr McSween said US-made haggis was “perfectly acceptable”. But now, he says, “the time has finally come to bring true Scottish haggis to the United States.”
Macsween will use the same recipe for the haggis it sells in the U.S. as it does in Canada, now one of its biggest markets. It consists of lamb heart and fat, oatmeal, white and black pepper, aromatic herbs, salt, onion and broth.
“We know it works,” Mr McSwain said. “It’s a delicious product, and it’s the most authentic haggis we can make within the legislation.”
Anne Robinson, founder of Scottish Gourmet USA In Greensboro, NC, not so sure. His company is one of the largest buyers of home-grown haggis in the U.S. (made from ground lamb and beef liver, venison or vegetables), and he questioned whether McSween’s American Will be able to meet the rules and regulations. Still, he welcomed the company to what he described as “a very niche market.”
Mr Brockman, a butcher in Brooklyn, lived in Scotland for four years and remembers McSween Haggis for Burns Night celebrations with friends. Now he makes his own at Prospect Butcher Company, using sheep hearts and livers. He usually sells 20 pounds of it around Burns Night.
“Everybody’s afraid of eating it this symbolic weirdness,” he said. “But it’s got a wonderful blend of hot spices and some iron crunch from the heart and liver. I don’t think it’s great at all. It’s just a good mound of food, man. It’s attractive in shape or color. No, but it tastes really good and smells great.”
