Homemade Vegetarian Haggis Recipe

Burn's Night is here and in my house that means an excuse for a special dinner.  I love punctuating the year by recognising all the 'special' days.  It gives me a bit of inspiration to cook something different and have a bit of themed fun with the family.

So I have made homemade vegetarian haggis using an adaption of the Vegetarian Society's recipe from 2001 using lots of veggies, lentils, pulses and nuts to make a very delicious haggis without a single sheep's stomach in sight!!  (It is all ready in the loaf tin to be cooked for tonight's dinner, so I've used photos from last year's haggis to illustrate this recipe.)

Vegetarian Haggis

Veggie Haggis Ingredients (makes a 1lb loaf)

4 oz chopped onion

4 oz chopped carrot

2 oz chopped mushrooms

2 oz red lentils

1 pint veggie stock

1 tin mashed kidney beans

3 oz mixed chopped nuts (I usesd peanut, cashew and hazelnuts)

2 tblspn soy sauce

1 tblspn lemon juice

2 teaspns thyme

2 teaspns rosemary

2 teaspns mixed spice

ground pepper

8 oz fine oatmeal

Method

Pre-heat oven to GM5.

Saute onion for 5 minutes, add carrot and mushrooms and cook for 5 minutes more.

Add lentils and three quarters of the stock.

Mash beans with remaining stock and add to pan with nuts, soy sauce, lemon juice and seasonings.

Cook together for 10 minutes.

Add oatmeal and simmer for 15 minutes.

Put into loaf tin and bake for 30 minutes.

Serve with tatties and neeps!!  We use Morrison's mashed carrot, swede and potato and then add some green veg like cabbage to the plate!  Top with gravy for a delicious, warming, healthy meal.  Here is last year's Burn's Night dinner!

Meat-Free Meal Ideas From Dalepak

As a vegetarian mum with a vegetarian family I am always on the lookout for meat-free products to feed us all.  Although I do enjoy cooking veggie meals from scratch, there are times (lots of times!) when I need to (or prefer to) prepare something quickly and easily.  It's times like this when I am grateful to food producers like Dalepak!

Dalepak have a great range of frozen meat-free goodies that are approved by the Vegetarian Society, meaning I can buy them in confidence.  I was asked to review some of their veggie offerings.

Dalepak Cauliflower Cheese Grills are a blend of cauliflower, green beans, onion and mature cheddar cheese wrapped in golden crumb.  They can be grilled, baked or fried from frozen making them very convenient.

They are ideal for feeding to my vegetarian children who all thoroughly enjoyed them saying they were "very tasty" and "cheesy"!  The clean plates were proof of how much they liked them.

The Cauliflower Cheese Grills were just £1 in Iceland, making them really reasonable as well as yummy!  They are a great product to keep on stand-by in the freezer for a quick, nutritious, veggie meal.  They are also great for non-vegetarians who want to cut down their meat intake making an easy, everyday meal option for all the family.

Other Dalepak Meat Free products include Vegetable Quarter Pounders, Vegetable Fingers, Vegetable Grills, Stuffing Balls, Mini Crispbakes, Nut Roasts and Spicy Bean Quarter Pounders.  Asda and Iceland are the main supermarket stockists of Dalepak products.  I live in a very small market town and I've not been able to find some of the products, but I am definitely looking forward to sampling them next time I shop further afield.  I especially like the sound of the Mini Crispbakes in cheese and onion, garlic mushroom and spicy bean flavours...perfect for a hot buffet!  And the Nut Roast, perfect for a Sunday lunch.


Find out more about the Dalepak range at www.dalepak.co.uk