Whisky sauce for haggis. It’s a no-brainer, right? Two of Scotland’s finest products paired together in a delicious meal!
Of course, this whisky sauce can also be a great accompaniment to other meats like steak or chicken (especially Balmoral Chicken), or even a nut roast.
Honestly, we’d have this whisky sauce on everything! We even made a Haggis Pasta recipe using this sauce.
This recipe is perfect as an accompaniment to your Burns Supper Haggis. You can read more about planning a Burns Supper here.
Scroll down for a printable recipe card and video of this recipe!
Initially, we made it to go with our Balmoral Chicken recipe (found here) and Haggis, Neeps, and Tatties Stack (found here), both of which make a delicious Burns Night meal (read more about Burns Night and more menu ideas here).
It’s so quick and easy to make that we can imagine we’ll find many other uses for it soon too.
If you’re planning a Burns Supper, then definitely check out our E-Book below!
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Things you’ll need to make Whisky Sauce
- Frying pan or large pot
- Lighter (ideally the kind with a long handle) or a long match
Ingredients for Whisky Sauce – Serves 2
(Increase ingredients proportionally to make for greater numbers)
You can scroll to the bottom of this post for a printable recipe card or follow the step-by-step recipe with photos below.
- 3-4 tbsp whisky
- 100ml Double cream
- 50ml stock – we used veggie but chicken works well too.
- Knob of butter
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- Salt and pepper to taste
How to make Whisky Sauce for Haggis – Step-by-step method
Heat the fry pan/pot to medium and add the knob of butter and melt
Add 3 tbsp of your choice of whisky, then light the whisky with the lighter and allow it to burn off the alcohol. This makes the sauce less bitter. Be careful at this stage, the flame can be quite aggressive but will burn out quickly.
Add the cream, stock, and mustard to the pan once the flame is out.
Allow to thicken and reduce on a low heat while continuing to stir, then add salt and pepper to taste
If you would like a stronger whisky taste, then you can add another tablespoon of whisky at the end too! This won’t have the alcohol burned off, so will be a much stronger taste.
Why flambé the whisky?
When you flambé (light and burn off) the whisky, it gets rid of some of the alcohol content but leaves all of the flavours.
You could avoid this step, but the sauce may have a little more of an alcoholic taste. Not a problem for some!
How to thicken/thin whisky sauce
Adding the stock and reducing on a low heat while stirring will thicken up the sauce. If you go too far, you can add a little more stock.
Can you make whisky sauce in advance?
Yes, you could make this in advance, allow it to cool and cover and then reheat over a very low heat, stirring again. If it’s too thick, you could add more stock or even just a tablespoon of warmed water.
However, we definitely think it tastes best made fresh!
It is also possible to use a microwave for reheating if you’ve made the sauce and put it into something else to store in the fridge.
However, you’ll need to use a low power (maximum 50%) and only heat in short bursts, stirring each time you stop it.
Can you freeze whisky sauce?
We wouldn’t recommend freezing the sauce and defrosting it for later use because of the cream content.
Dishes to have whisky sauce with
This whisky sauce recipe is delicious with our Chicken Balmoral recipe, or pour it on top of a Haggis, Neeps, and Tatties stack. It’s also perfect with Veggie Haggis too!
- Easy Chicken Balmoral recipe
- How to make a Haggis, Neeps, and Tattie Stack
- Tasty Vegetarian Haggis recipe
- 32 Recipes for Haggis – there are lots of options here you could add whisky sauce to, or use leftover haggis for
- Haggis Pasta – we use this sauce as the paste sauce!
- Sides like Rumbledethumps or Clapshot
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Whisky Sauce for Haggis
This creamy whisky sauce is perfect to serve over haggis, neeps, and tatties, or Balmoral Chicken. You can serve it with whatever else you like to of course! We recommend it with steak and chicken, or even nut roast too.
Ingredients
- 3-4 tbsp whisky
- 100ml Double cream
- 50ml stock - Veggie or Chicken
- Knob of butter
- 1 tsp dijon mustard
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Heat the fry pan/pot to medium
- Add the knob of butter and melt Add 3 tbsp of your choice of whisky
- Light the whisky with the lighter and allow it to burn off the alcohol
- Add the cream, stock, and mustard
- Continue to stir and allow to thicken and reduce, stirring as necessary
- Add salt and pepper to taste
- If you would like a stronger whisky taste then you can add another tablespoon of whisky at the end too
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
2Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 507Total Fat: 30gSaturated Fat: 17gTrans Fat: 1gUnsaturated Fat: 11gCholesterol: 113mgSodium: 358mgCarbohydrates: 9gFiber: 2gSugar: 3gProtein: 14g
The nutritional data in this recipe is provided by a third party and these values are automatically calculated and offered for guidance only. Their accuracy is not guaranteed.
More Classic Scottish Recipes:
- Scottish Soup Recipes
- Easy & Authentic Scotch Pie Recipe
- Cranachan: A Traditional Scottish Dessert Recipe
- Easy & Tasty Mince and Tatties Recipe
- Traditional Scottish Skirlie Recipe
- Easy Clootie Dumpling Recipe
- Traditional Homemade Scottish Tablet Recipe
- Atholl Brose – Whisky Cocktail Recipe
Let us know how you get on!
Sonja and Phil x
I wondered how mine would turn out as I cannot have any dairy products because of an allergy. I made mine with margarine and Oat Milk. I did not use any broth which I assumed was to thin the cream and instead used 150ml of oat milk and let it all boil down. Worked great!
Excellent, that’s a great way to make the recipe suitable for you. Well done!
How much is a “Knob” of butter?
Hi Randi,
We would normally cut the corner of a block of butter but we can see how this might not be the best description! Sorry! We would suggest a knob of butter is about 1.5 Tablespoons of butter. We hope this helps, Phil & Sonja
About the size of a walnut …
Just followed this recipe (mostly – all cream, no stock) for St Andrew’s night haggis dinner… Yummy! And so easy! I’ve tried more complex options in the past, but this was better. Thanks guys 😊
Sometimes the simple way os the best way! We’re really pleased we got to play a little part in your St Andrew’s Night! Thanks for letting us know 🙂
The sauce was very tasty, but the yield was small. I used 150ml of oatmilk. I was completely unprepared for the high flames which singed my fringe and gave me a serious fright. Perhaps you should warn of this in your recipe.
Hi Nicky,
We’re very sorry to hear about your fringe, we hope it wasn’t too badly singed! The serving is for two and we’ve found these amounts to be enough, maybe they’re a little thicker with cream rather than oat milk though that will add a lovely extra taste.
All the best,
Phil
Is the cream single or double
Hi Angie,
It’s Double cream, sorry we must have forgotten to add that detail!
Enjoy,
Phil & Sonja
What type of stock is it? Chicken, veggie. lamb?
Hi Tom,
A very good question. Most stocky types work so this can be decided by your main dish. However, we used veggie as it was the one we had to hand and tasted great!
Hope this helps,
Phil
Thanks Phil. I’m using it with haggis, will try the veggie stock!
Thank you, this looks delicious! Does it matter what kind of whisky I use for this? I have bottles from the Speyside area, the highlands, and Islay, but I’m not sure which would be more appropriate to mix in!
You can use whichever you are willing to part with! Using a more peaty whisky will add a bit of smokiness, which depends on personal taste. It’s really up to you, the flavour of whatever whisky you choose is what will come through!
I made this and had with haggis it was delicious
My hubby wants to have burns night every week thank you for sharing.
Haha we’d be keen for Burns Night every week too! You’re welcome, we’re glad you enjoyed it :).
Hi I made this sauce and it’s delicious, a little bit salty though… any ideas how to rectify this
Hi Lynne,
Thanks for your comment we’re glad you like it! The only thing we can think is that the stock used is a bit salty, since any other salt comes from whatever you want to add to taste. Possibly try a low salt stock cube? The only other thing could be the mustard, so maybe look for one lower in salt and then also don’t add any extra salt, just a little pepper.
Burns night is a major event in our house, (being married to a Scot who is passionate about his heritage and has made it his mission in life to educate our southern softie friends with Scottish cuisine😀)This recipe will be used I assure you as an alternative option , We have succeeded in persuading them to eat veggie haggis from McSweens, whilst their normal haggis disappears very quickly..Do you have a recipe book for sale, if so may I have the details please.?
Sounds like a very passionate Scot indeed! We like MacSween’s haggis and the veggie version and have used it in all of our recipes to date! Yum! We have talked about a book but we only started Scottish Scran in April so want to make sure the recipes are as good as they can be before we go down that rabbit hole!
I will need to try this but have made a similar sauce with Drambuie rather than Whisky, it is amazing and gives a great sweetness. A dish to check out and maybe you could try is Chicken Bonnie Prince Charlie, would love to see your take on this…?
Our sauce works with either whisky or Drambuie so hopefully you’ll like it! We’ll look into Chicken Bonnie Prince Charlie, sounds interesting!
Hello, my sauce was a little thin, help!
You can continue to heat to reduce it a bit more and it should thicken up! It’s only a small serving though so you then may want to add more cream etc.
Very nice simple recipe. A couple of thoughts – don’t use expensive single malt whisky: teachers/grouse etc is fine for this. If you REALLY want the peaty notes of an islay whisky, add a single teaspoon of the stuff right before serving, and if you’re after the sweetness of drambuie, just add a touch of honey to taste instead.
Also, if you are cooking some turnip (swede) to go with the haggis, use the cooking water from the turnip and add your chicken stock cube to it. A teaspoon of cornflour slaked in a small amount of water will thicken your sauce nicely if it’s too runny.
Happy new year!!
Hi there. Looking forward to making this for a Burns night dinner for 9 this Saturday.
Question- is there any way this can be made a couple of hours in advance and gently reheated?
So sorry for the late reply, we hope you had a fantastic evening! Phil & Sonja
I stopped using this site as bombarded with adverts , website Just about revenue
Hi Derek, we’re sorry you feel this way. We’ve worked very hard to provide people with authentic and traditional recipes. The site was started when COVID hit and our travel website lost all of its income, as you can see in our about section. So yes, in a way this website is about revenue. The revenue pays for the time, ingredients, equipment etc that it takes to produce the quality that we’re proud of. We understand ads can be frustrating but this is our literal job, I’m assuming you don’t work for free? Sadly as you have stopped using the site you won’t see this but we hope if you do you’ll understand the need for the ads on the site and why we have them.
All the best,
Phil
I like whisky sauce with venison. That’s how I first has it, so mayb ethat’s why. Good with many things though.
I’ve been trying out different recipes for whisky sauce over the last couple of months in preparation for a Scottish dinner with friends, and this recipe was by far the best! Thank you so much!
Thanks so much for letting us know that’s amazing to hear!
I use this recipe every year for a small Burns supper for friends. Works well every time.
Always complimented on it.
Thank you
That’s so great to hear thank you!!
Wow this sauce is delicious. I have tried many sauces over the years and I can honestly say it’s the best one I’ve tasted. No more searching . Thank you
We’re so pleased to hear it thank you!