The best way to celebrate Robbie Burns is with haggis: Jasmine Mangalaseril

For many around the world and here in Waterloo region, Jan. 25 is a day to celebrate Scotland's national poet and favourite son, Robert (or Robbie or Rabbie) Burns.

Burns was born on Jan. 25, 1759, in Alloway, Scotland. His first book of poetry was published in 1786. By the time he passed in 1796, he wrote hundreds of poems, songs, and letters.

Using the Scots language, and sometimes English, Burns wrote about Scottish life, including love, nature, and religion. His satires of politicians and religious leaders also made him an enduring and popular figure, influencing the works of many, including John Steinbeck, Bob Dylan, and Robert Service.

Celebrating the legacy of Rabbie Burns

While some families have their own Burns Supper at home, you will often find more ceremony and tradition at public events.

The Kitchener-Waterloo Branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society has hosted Burns Supper and Dances since 1984.

"This is a very formal thing," said Stuart McTavish Chair of the Kitchener-Waterloo Branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society. "You have the piper, the whisky bearers, the haggis bearer come up. We place the haggis in a very prominent spot in front of the head table."

Someone will recite Burns' Address To a Haggis, then a toast to the haggis follows before the savoury pudding is brought back to the kitchen to be cut.

After the Selkirk Grace, dinner is haggis, neeps and tatties (rutabaga and potatoes), along with other dishes like a Scotch pie. Dessert can vary: apple crumble, pineapple tart, shortbread. After toasts to the lads and lassies and a featured speaker, they dance.

"The dances have a Robbie Burns flavour to them," said Kathryn Lecocq, one of the Society's dance instructors. "We have a hundred people or so on the floor and [the first dance] we're going to do is an around-the-room dance called Tam o'Shanter, which was one of Burns' poems."

Chieftain o' the puddin'-race

In Canada, haggis is usually considered a special occasion dish; in Scotland it's everyday fare.

"If you go to a restaurant, there's a Balmoral chicken. It's a chicken breast stuffed with haggis, which is really, really good," said Laura McFarlane, who manages her family's Rising Dough Scottish Bakery in Cambridge. "You get deep fried haggis at the fish and chip shop. It's quite common to eat it back home, anywhere, anytime of the year, any day."

It's a thrice-cooked savoury pudding, famously made with "the odd bits."

Traditional recipes cook lamb's heart, liver, kidney, and lungs, with oats, suet, and aromatics, in a sheep's stomach. Today's recipes stuff casings with heart, kidney, liver, oats, suet, onions and spices such as salt, pepper, nutmeg, coriander seed, and mace. 

Frabert's Fresh Foods in Fergus doesn't make its own haggis (like Rising Dough, they source it from Oakville's Finest Butchery), but their chef, Greg Murray, has made it in restaurants and pubs.

"It's absolutely not for the faint of heart," explained Murray. "Taking all those little bits and pieces no one really knows what to do with, chopping them up, boiling them down, grinding them up, mixing them with your oats."

It's then simmered or steamed. It's cooked again before serving.

By the time it's cooked, you're just basically smelling and tasting the spices, and some of the meat's iron, said Murray.

Haggis has oatmeal's sticky-slipperiness and the finely ground, delicately-spiced meat lends a bit of a metallic tang (like mild bison).

"A lot of the times, it's like very peppery oatmeal," said Murray. "Consistency-wise, if it's done really nice…it should still be fairly moist and almost like a very rustic country pâté."

McFarlane agrees the meats' flavours aren't overpowering. "I always describe it like a strong-tasting ground beef…There's oats...so the texture's not just ground beef. It's a bit finer."

And Lecocq uses it instead of ground beef. "I love Haggis. I'll make a haggis poutine. I'll do haggis nachos. I'll put haggis in my spaghetti sauce."

In Cambridge: British Pride and Rising Dough have haggis pies; Rising dough also stocks whole and sliced beef and lamb haggis.

In Waterloo: Brady's Meat and Deli

In Fergus:  Frabert's Fresh Foods