Balmoral Chicken Recipe: Chicken Stuffed with Haggis - Scottish Scran (2024)

It’s no secret that Haggis is basically the national food of Scotland.

However, you might be unprepared for how much it actually appears on restaurant menus across the country and how many people make it at home too.

The classic dish is Haggis, Neeps, and Tatties, but there are definitely other more adventurous uses of this savoury pudding. We even have a post with 33 haggis recipe ideas!

One favourite is Haggis Bon Bons, which are little balls of haggis that are crumbed and fried and usually served with some sort of whisky dipping sauce. (See our recipe here!)

However, another is Chicken Balmoral, which is chicken stuffed with haggis and then wrapped in bacon. It can be served with whatever vegetables you like but is usually liberally covered in a whisky cream sauce.

We’ve made a lot of sweet recipes here, other than Cullen Skink and Tattie Scones, so we decided it was about time to showcase some more of Scotland’s best savoury dishes! And we’re starting with Chicken Balmoral, or chicken stuffed with haggis.

Our Balmoral Chicken recipe is fairly standard, as there’s not a lot of variation to be had, but we also made our own whisky sauce recipe to go along with it (which you can find here) and have given you some options for what vegetables you might want to serve it with too.

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What is Balmoral Chicken?

Chicken Balmoral, Balmoral Chicken, or even Highland Chicken. They’re all the same! To make the dish a chicken breast is slit open on one side and stuffed with haggis, then wrapped in bacon and lightly fried before being finished off in the oven.

We can’t find any history to this dish, and it’s likely that it’s a more recent addition to the Scottish kitchen.

The reason for the name is also unclear, although “Balmoral” undoubtedly refers to the estate owned by the Queen and used as her Scottish holiday home.

Balmoral Chicken can be used as a substitute recipe for a Burn’s Supper if you still want to celebrate Robert Burns and the Haggis, but want to serve something a little different than the traditional Haggis, Neeps, and Tatties.

Unfortunately (we think!), haggis has been banned from being imported to the USA since 1971. While this means that making a Chicken Balmoral with real haggis isn’t possible, you can definitely make a vegetarian haggis substitute to use instead. Check out our veggie haggis recipe here!

Ingredients for this Balmoral Chicken Recipe

Serves 2

• 2 large chicken breasts
• 70-100g haggis, depending on the size of the chicken breasts
• 4 rashers of bacon
• Vegetables of your choice to serve with – we had neeps and tatties!
• Whisky Sauce (see recipe here)

How to make Balmoral Chicken – Step by step method

This recipe serves two people, but you can easily double for four or more of course.

We served it with mashed neeps and tatties, which is Swedish turnip and potatoes, as well as some broccoli. You can choose whatever you like to serve with it!

Turn the oven on to 200C (400F).

At this point, it depends on the haggis you have. Commercially sold haggis is generally served already cooked, so it just needs to be reheated to piping hot. This will happen when you cook the chicken, so you can go ahead and stuff the chicken as below.

If you’ve bought haggis from a butcher, it may not be cooked, so ask when you buy it. You’ll want to cook it first, then allow it to cool enough to stuff the chicken breasts.

We find it easiest to buy a small haggis, open it, and cook only what we need, leaving the rest for another meal or freezing it.

Take the chicken breasts and make a slit in the side at the largest point, slicing through until about 1cm is left on the opposite side.

Take the cooked haggis and stuff half into each chicken breast. You don’t want them to be too full, as the chicken should basically seal back around the haggis to form a circle of chicken with the haggis at the centre.

Lay the bacon out and then place the chicken breast on one end, rolling it to cover the centre and seal the slit. Ideally, the ends of the bacon will be on the underside of the chicken. If you really need to you can secure it with a toothpick but it should stick fairly well to the chicken itself.

Fry the wrapped chicken breasts so that the bacon browns a little and starts to crisp a bit.

Put them into a pan or on a baking tray and bake in the oven for around 30-40 minutes depending on the size of the chicken breasts. The juices should run clear when you insert a sharp knife.

Meanwhile, cook any accompanying vegetables and the whisky sauce (check out our recipe here).

To serve, slice the chicken breast in half so you can see the haggis inside, place on the plate with the vegetables and liberally pour over whisky sauce!

Variations

As mentioned, you could definitely make this recipe with vegetarian haggis if you don’t have access to the real thing. Many people actually prefer vegetarian haggis too!

There are lots of different recipes that it is usually made of lentils or split peas and the same sort of herbs and spices as haggis itself – see ours here.

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Other Haggis Recipes:

• How to Make a Haggis, Neeps and Tatties Stack
• Delicious Creamy Haggis Pasta Recipe
• Super Easy Haggis Burger Recipe
• Tasty Vegetarian Haggis Recipe
• Recipes for Haggis: 32 Ideas for Using Haggis
• Whisky Sauce for Haggis