What is Burns Night? Burns Night is annually celebrated across Scotland on or around the 25th of January. It is to commemorate the life of the famous Scottish poet, Robert Burns who was born on the 25th of January 1759. Robert Burns is probably most well known for Auld Lang Syne which is typically played at midnight on New Years Eve to bid farewell to the old year.
I am so glad to be teaming up with Marks & Spencer for this post and they kindly provided me with the ingredients for a proper Burns supper:
- Haggis – specially made for M&S by Macsween of Edinburgh. They had a few different sizes of Haggis and also a veggie option too.
- Potatoes – “Tatties”
- Swede – “Neeps”
- Carrots
- Whisky sauce – this is a new product developed by customer demand using Scottish whisky and grain mustard – yum! Guess what? It is only £1 which is amazing!
- Speyside Whisky – there’s 20% off the core whisky range until 29 January
I’ll be honest with you… I have never cooked a Burns Supper so I roped in a family friend, Susan; an expert of the occasion and we made a night of it. Our night started by Susan’s Son reciting the famous poem ‘Address to a Haggis’. This poem was written by Robert Burns to show his appreciation of the Haggis.
This was actually the first time that I had tried Haggis, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Despite its not very appealing look, it tasted really good! It was much lighter and more crumbley than I thought it would be. The Whiskey sauce was thicker than I had expected however, complimented the Haggis really well. You could really taste the whiskey in it!
My mum decided to make some stovies to go along side our Haggis and all the trimmings – as if we didn’t have enough food already! Stovies are a traditional Scottish dish that originally consisted of whatever you had left over from a Sunday roast however now a days can be made in many different ways. Ours was made from beef, tatties and onions – delicious!
Of course our night would not be complete without a good quality Whiskey. Again, I am not generally a Whiskey drinker but I definitely couldn’t say no on this occasion. We started by sipping it neat and then added a few drops of water which surprisingly changes the taste and to me made it a lot easier to drink.
I want to say a massive thank you to M&S for supplying me with some amazing ingredients and we all had a fabulous time celebrating Robert Burns (even if it was a couple of days early!)
Click here to find your nearest Marks and Spencer.
Do you do anything fun for Burns Night? Let me know in the comments!
Until next time,
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