Today I went to the international grocery store and I ran in to Gobo root. I’ve never seen anything like it.

The Google says it’s popular in Japan as both a food and a medicine.

What do you do with it?

I have an old macrobiotic cookbook that calls for it (of course macrobiotics is Japanese in origin). It's burdock root; I guess the same variety that grows wild here? Haven't tried it.

All I know is that it looks like firewood.

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Originally posted by Steve Miller:
All I know is that it looks like firewood.

Aye, that it does!

I love it! Mr SK. makes a kind of stew (no, it's not a stew...) with gobo,carrots, chicken, mushrooms (shiitake), and then some Japanese thing that looks like dirty erasers but is actually awesome!

Anyway, he does something to the gobo before cooking it, maybe soaks it and skims of the ugly that floats up in the water?

I will ask him. As you can see, I don't know what I'm talking about!

What does it taste like?

Ok, from Mr. SK: the first step is to peel it, put it in cool water (just water from the tap) for about 5-10 minutes. The take it out, and do whatever you would do to cook it. Instead of cool water, Mr. SK sometimes bring the water to a boil to make the gobo softer, but that first water always gets thrown out.

Mr. SK usually cuts it in sort of long, sideways slices. The stew that he makes (the ingredients I listed above) uses as its base/flavoring the following: Japanese dashi stock (like fish stock maybe), sugar, ginger, soy sauce, mirin. (Except not in that order??)

This might not be exactly the same, but I googled the name of this dish (chikuzenni) and found that there were several websites with the instructions in English. Here's one, with a photo even.

https://www.kikkoman.com/en/fo...raditional-28-4.html

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What does it taste like?

That's almost impossible to answer.... Earthy, like carrots if they were more like potatoes??

Gobo has a really nice texture... and when you make it with the kind of stew described above, it's a perfect complement to the other ingredients...

Maybe I can get Mr. SK to tell me how he makes it (since I suspect it's a little easier than that website makes it out to seem)...

The big thing is the stock, the dashi plus soy sauce, mirin, then sugar, ginger, I don't think he follows a recipe for that but mainly does it to taste.

Oh, but there are other things that use gobo, like kinpira gobo, which is very different from the chikuzenni stew

https://www.chopstickchronicle...raised-burdock-root/

Gobo is also used in tenpura, so it gets battered and fried, that's super yummy.

It's like a cousin of carrots and potatoes but not at all like beets...

Wow it's hard to describe how something tastes. Oh, have you ever had lotus root? (Renkon) I think gobo is somewhat similar to renkon (but Mr. SK is saying no, it's not at all like that!! :P

Oh, Cook Pad has an english site! Taht's one that puts lots of recipes online in Japanese, so here's their english page:

https://cookpad.com/us/recipes...-and-carrot-stir-fry

Now I'm hungry...

I am laughing. It sounds wonderful!

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I am laughing.

My efforts to describe it does read a little funny ...