Haggis substitute

Substitutes for Haggis with ratios

1. 2Homemade haggis-style mixture

   Close match

   Use the same amount by weight

   Lamb mince and lamb liver cooked with toasted pinhead oatmeal, suet, onion and spice, served loose rather than in a casing.

   What changes

   Best for

   haggis, neeps and tatties, Burns Night, stuffing, when you cannot buy haggis at all

   Prep. Toast the oatmeal dry before adding liquid, and use pinhead or steel-cut oats rather than rolled oats, which turn to porridge.

   This is the closest you will get outside Scotland, and it is straightforward. For four people, brown 400g lamb mince, add 150g finely chopped lamb liver and cook it just until it loses its rawness, then stir in a large finely chopped onion softened in 50g of suet or butter, 100g of pinhead or steel-cut oatmeal toasted dry in a pan until it smells nutty, and 300ml of lamb or beef stock. Season very heavily with black pepper, at least a teaspoon, plus half a teaspoon each of ground coriander and nutmeg and a good pinch of allspice and mace. Simmer covered for 30 minutes until the oatmeal is tender. It will not have the fine even texture of a boiled pudding, but the flavour is right. The pepper is not a garnish here; underseasoning is the usual reason a homemade version tastes dull.

2. 3Black pudding or blood sausage

   Different taste

   Use the same amount by weight

   A dark pudding set with blood and bulked with oatmeal or barley, sold as black pudding, boudin noir or morcilla.

   What changes

   Best for

   haggis, neeps and tatties, full breakfast plates, stuffing, haggis-style toppings, balmoral chicken

   Prep. Slice thickly and fry in a dry hot pan so it crisps on the outside, or crumble it and fry loose to mimic haggis's texture.

   A sensible swap because it plays the same part on a plate: a dark, dense, crumbly, savoury pudding that you slice or spoon alongside mashed swede and potato. The Scottish and Irish versions even contain oatmeal, so the texture can be very close. Flavour is where it diverges sharply. Black pudding leads with an iron-y, mineral, faintly sweet note from the blood, while haggis leads with black pepper, toasted oats and the specific bitterness of liver. Nobody will mistake one for the other, but the meal works. Adding a heavy grind of black pepper and a pinch of nutmeg as you fry it pushes it a little towards haggis.

3. 4Skirlie

   Close match

   Use the same amount by volume as a side, or use as the base of a fuller substitute

   The traditional Scottish dish of oatmeal fried with onion in suet, dripping or butter until toasted and crumbly.

   What changes

   Best for

   haggis, neeps and tatties, vegetarian Burns Night, stuffing for poultry, topping mashed neeps

   Prep. Use medium or pinhead oatmeal, never rolled oats or instant porridge oats, which go pasty instead of staying separate and toasted.

   Underrated as a haggis substitute and the cheapest of the lot, because it is quite literally the non-offal half of haggis cooked in a frying pan. Soften a chopped onion in 50g of butter, suet or beef dripping, stir in 100g of medium or pinhead oatmeal, and fry for five to ten minutes until the oats smell toasted and the mixture is loose and crumbly, seasoning very heavily with black pepper and salt. What you get is exactly haggis's nutty, peppery, buttery, grainy character with none of the meat. Stir through 300g of browned lamb or beef mince and you have something close enough that most people would not query it under a ladle of gravy.

4. 5Coarse pork or lamb sausagemeat with oats and pepper

   Different taste

   Use the same amount by weight, plus 2 tbsp oatmeal per 250g

   Plain butcher's sausagemeat, Lorne sausage or skinned sausages, bulked with oatmeal and seasoned up.

   What changes

   Best for

   stuffing, haggis-style patties, breakfast plates, feeding people who will not eat offal

   Prep. Toast the oatmeal in a dry pan first and add it towards the end, with a splash of stock so it hydrates without going gluey.

   The practical answer when the shops have nothing unusual in them. Break the sausagemeat up in a pan, brown it well, and stir in two tablespoons of toasted oatmeal per 250g along with a heavy grind of black pepper, a pinch of nutmeg, a pinch of allspice and a chopped onion softened in butter. The oatmeal is what stops it reading as simply mince, giving that granular crumble that is so characteristic of haggis. It will be sweeter, milder and much less complex, without any of the offal depth or bitterness, so lean hard on the pepper and serve it with plenty of gravy or a whisky cream sauce.

5. 6There is no real substitute, and here is the least-bad plan

   Taste and texture differ

   Accepting the gap and building the meal around what haggis was contributing.

   What changes

   Best for

   Burns Night with no haggis available, cooking abroad, guests who dislike offal

   Prep. Put the effort into the neeps, the tatties and the sauce, which is where most of the eating pleasure of the dish actually lives.

   Worth being honest: nothing tastes like haggis, because nothing else combines offal, oatmeal and that much pepper in one pudding, and the slight bitterness of liver is not reproducible with seasoning. If you cannot get haggis or a vegetarian version, the best plan is to stop imitating and cook the rest of the meal properly. Make good mashed swede and potato with plenty of butter and white pepper, make a whisky cream sauce, and serve skirlie plus something rich such as browned lamb mince, black pudding or a lamb faggot alongside. The meal will be recognisably in the right tradition and genuinely good, which is a better outcome than a poor approximation.