Fresh from the garden to the kitchen

How to liven up your Burns night menu in 2o21

Burns night is 25th January and is celebrated the whole over in Scottish communities but what does it mean? How can we liven up Burns Night in 2021? No dancing or group gatherings are allowed; we’ll only be able to gather online.

“Burns Night is annually celebrated in Scotland on or around January 25. It commemorates the life of the bard (poet) Robert Burns, who was born on January 25, 1759. The day also celebrates Burns’ contribution to Scottish culture. His best known work is Auld Lang Syne.” from Time and Date.com

Not only do we eat that most traditional of Scottish foods (haggis) but the bagpipes and kilts also play a part in a full-on social Burns night dinner, complete with readings from Rabbie Burns poems. This year of course will be a wee bit different as we won’t be able to  gather together for a proper social event addressing the haggis and toasting the haggis. But maybe we can liven things up a bit at home.

Check out the online event on the VisitScotland website or if you really want to do things in style at home follow the suggestions here

Now for our personal favourites:

we don’t like to serve haggis in an unappetising heap on a plate. Some people are put off by the very nature of haggis so we try to make it look as appetising as possible, even if this means that we can’t do the traditional Address to the Haggis, though I suppose if we wanted to we could still do it before we made up the fancy dishes.

This is one of our preferred ways to serve haggis:

We always like to include some kind of greens!

Haggis stack recipe

Haggis stacks are easy to make (particularly if you have a suitable mould – but if you don’t you can use an empty clean food tin as a mould)#

1. Prepare your mashed potato and mashed neeps.
2. Roll your haggis out like pastry to a thickness of 2 – 3cm. Cut rounds and lay them on a tray.
3. Let neeps and tatties cool before cutting out rounds about the same thickness as the haggis.
4. Stack all the rounds in this order: haggis on the bottom, neeps in the middle, potato on top.
5. Grate a wee bit of cheese on top (any hard cheese will do).
6. Top with blanched green beans wrapped with prosciutto to add a bit of class.
7. Serve with greens of your choice.

If you’re gluten free you don’t have to give up haggis – there are gluten free versions on the market or you can follow this recipe

Alternatively you can bake your haggis and use this fantastic neeps and tatties recipe

Haggis can be a wee bit dry on its own so we like to add either a mushroom or a whisky sauce

Enjoy your Burns Night in style!

Hope we can celebrate with you another time.