Kinpira Gobo

Posted January 28th, 2011 in Food 6 Comments »

Kinpira gobo, sweet soy glazed burdock root, is one of my favorite Japanese home-style food.  Kinpira is a  Japanese cooking style of “sauté and simmer”. It is commonly used to cook roots vegetables such as burdock roots, carrots, lotus roots and bamboo shoots.

The common ingredients for kinpira gobo are shredded burdock roots, carrots, and meat (usually thinly sliced pork or beef).  The seasonings are typical 4 Japanese ingredients.  If you have these 4 ingredients in your kitchen pantry, you can make kinpira at any time.

This time I used frozen shredded Japanese burdock roots.  There are also frozen shredded burdock roots from China at grocery shops and are much cheaper, but Japanese one tastes much better.  Even after thawed, the each burdock root still remains its crunchy texture.  It’s bit hard to get fresh burdock roots in Perth, so I always buy a frozen packet from Asian grocery shop and keep in the freezer.

<Kinpira Gobo>

  • 100g burdock roots, shredded
  • 1 carrot
  • 50g pork meat (any part), sliced
  • 1 tbs sesame oil
  • 2 tbs sake (cooking wine)
  • 2 tbs mirin
  • 3 tbs soy sauce
  • 1 tbs roasted white sesame seeds
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  1. Peel the carrot and shred into the same size as burdock roots.
  2. Heat sesame oil in a frying pan, and saute burdock roots and carrot for 2~3 minutes.
  3. Add sake, mirin and soy sauce to the pan.  Stir and cook until the liquid is almost gone.
  4. Turn off the heat and mix through the sesame seeds.

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6 Comments on “Kinpira Gobo”

  1. 1 Adam said at 11:00 am on October 28th, 2013:

    Hi
    Can you tell me where in Perth you buy Kinpira? Its new to me and I have no idea what to look for in an asian grocery store…
    Cheers

    Adam

  2. 2 umepontarou said at 10:51 pm on October 30th, 2013:

    Hi Adam,
    You will need burdock roots for kinpira. I’ve never seen fresh burdock roots in Perth, so I buy frozen one from Yee Seng Oriental – my local Asian grocery shop. I’m sure you will find it at Nippon Food in Subiaco, Lion Oriental / Loi’s / Emma’s Seafood Young Tofu in Northbridge, and other Asian grocery shops across Perth. They are frozen, usually shredded. The name may be “gobou” or “gobo” (Japanese for burdock roots).

    Other than burdock roots, you will need basic Japanese ingredients such as soy sauce and mirin. 🙂

  3. 3 Adam said at 4:43 pm on November 13th, 2013:

    Thanks so much! Im going to check out Lion and Emma’s today!
    Generally speaking, do you recommend Nippon for most Japanaese ingredients? (like konnyaku noodles etc?)

    Adam

  4. 4 umepontarou said at 10:09 am on November 21st, 2013:

    Adam,
    I think Nippon Food has lot more variety in Japanese food. However, because of tsunami and radiation that happened in Japan, lots of things are prohibited to import from Japan. I notice many Japanese instant noodles available in Nippon Food – I think they are easy to get approved to import. I’m not sure if they sell konnyaku noodle but give them a try 🙂 Hope you find something you are looking for!

  5. 5 Lisa said at 1:46 pm on January 13th, 2017:

    Hi ,

    I went to lee oriental today and they have the frozen gobo in a blue packet. Is that the one you brought? It is made in china. Is that the right one? Please reply. Many thanks

  6. 6 umepontarou said at 9:57 am on January 29th, 2017:

    Hi, yes I’m pretty sure that was it. If there’s frozen gobo which is made in Japan I recommend you to get that instead. 🙂

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