Haggis is a Scottish dish traditionally combining a sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs with oatmeal, onion, and spices.
The ingredients are minced and mixed with suet, stock, and seasonings. Traditionally, the mixture was cooked inside the animal’s stomach, although modern commercial haggis is commonly prepared in an artificial casing. Oatmeal gives the dish its distinctive texture and helps absorb the savoury cooking juices.
Haggis is strongly associated with Burns Night, held on 25 January to celebrate the Scottish poet Robert Burns. His 1786 poem “Address to a Haggis” helped cement the dish’s place in Scottish cultural celebrations, where it is often ceremonially presented and accompanied by bagpipes.
Haggis is sometimes mistaken for black pudding because both are traditional dishes using offal. Black pudding is a blood sausage, whereas haggis is defined by its minced offal, oatmeal, onion, and spice mixture.